Pretense
by Lutralutra
Summary: She waved, and he waved back. They knew each other, once. But when Fate led them down separate paths, the thin line between pretense and reality became an impassable barrier. PeinKonan, now AU. Discontinued.
1. Chapter 1: Better

**Pretense**

**by LutraShinobi**

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Never have, never will.

This is a story that was inspired by one of my other fics, _Faded Red Clouds, _and my interest in the two mysterious characters of Pein and Blue (from Akatsuki). It got off to an odd start, but for once, I actually have a sort-of plan for the story. Not up 'til the very end, though. Anyway, read it, try to understand it, and please review and share your thoughts with me.

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Chapter 1 - Better 

The first time she ever saw him was at the park, one summer's day, when the sun shone in all its glory and she was too young to see the darkness behind it. She was three and a half; so was he. She noticed him right away, because he wasn't playing like the other children. He wasn't gliding down the shiny silver slide. He wasn't flying back and forth in the air on the swings. He wasn't even crouched in the sandbox, busy building his own civilization. But he looked as if he would get up and do all those things, and enjoy them too, if he could. For the moment, however, he sat alone in the grass at the edge of the trees, hugging his knees to his chin.

His hair was short, but it stuck out at every angle in little spikes. And what a colour! A rich brown, mixed with a feisty red - golden russet, like the autumn leaves. Auburn. His eyes were irresistible too - they were a sparkling sapphire blue. They reminded her of light reflecting off the sea on a sunny day. Or how she imagined it, anyway; she had never seen the sea. She doubted that he had, either, but as she watched his face with avid interest, she somehow found it difficult to believe that he hadn't.

"Who is _he, _Father?" she asked, tugging on her father's shirt and pointing. He followed her gaze and his eyebrows lowered, adding wrinkles to his forehead. There was a moment of silence before he answered in a deep, grave voice, "Don't concern yourself with him, Blue."

She almost pouted, then remembered that her mother had told her that real kunoichi never pouted, or cried, or complained. They "discussed matters in a calm, dignified manner". She tried to fix her features into an expression that matched what she thought that meant, and said evenly, "That wasn't a proper answer, Father."

"Don't be rude," her father told her shortly, and spun her small, lithe figure around so that she ended up with her back to the fascinating boy. But she craned her neck backwards and caught a glimpse of him. His eyes were aimed towards her now, and she felt an inexpressible thrill at the knowledge that he was watching her, too. Maybe he was asking himself, just as she had asked her father, _Who is she?_

"Blue," her father said sharply, distracting her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and forcefully turned her away, blocking her vision with his elbow. She sidestepped, twisting out of his grip, and managed a brief wave in the boy's direction before her father, glaring now, stepped in front of her and pulled her hand down.

"We're going home now, Blue," he said, his voice quivering with displeasure. She could sense one of his obedience lectures coming up very soon, and she walked out onto the street with a stubborn flick of her dark blue hair.

But, just before her father had obscured her field of sight with his body, she had seen the boy's hand raise by his head in an unmistakable wave - returning the greeting.

Blue smiled all the way home.

* * *

The first time he ever spoke to her was at the Academy, in the springtime, when the flowers were shooting upwards, but slowly, and he could still see the shadow of winter and feel its bite on his skin. He was seven; so was she. He had been aware of her all day, catching glimpses of her out of the corner of his eye. The glimpses weren't enough, but they showed him the details - most of them. Her straight indigo hair, lightly brushing her shoulders, her dark, quick eyes, shadowed by heavy, bold lids; those features were memorized by now. Still, he hated just having to glance - he wanted to _stare. _

Sometimes he permitted himself to look up, to see her face head-on. Sometimes she would be looking up too, looking up at him. But she never waved; she knew better than that. And if she had chanced to wave, he would have known better than to wave back.

It was better, he thought, as she hovered on the edge of his peripheral vision, for it to be this way. It was better for him to know he didn't belong, he wasn't one of them, and for him to accept that. Pretending was no good once you knew reality. When you were three and a half, pretending could be your reality. When you were three and a half, you could wave back. When you were seven, you kept your distance.

Another girl walked past him without acknowledging his presence in the slightest, the eleventh that afternoon. The only people who ever _did_ acknowledge him were the men with the rough voices who took him away every now and then. "Pein," they said, "Come with us." And he came, and sometimes they fed him, or trained him, or gave him books to read. But mostly they tested him. Mostly they hurt him.

He stood up. Almost everyone had left already, and he had to base everything on what the others did. He would never be like them, but they were his only foundation.

He had taken just one step when a voice behind him said quietly, "Pein."

He turned, hardly daring to believe it. He knew better. But still he said, "Blue?"

She was there, exactly like the picture in his mind. Except that his mental image didn't speak, and her lips were moving, and sound was emerging. "Where are you going?" She seemed genuinely curious, but he couldn't be sure. Was she still pretending?

"Home," he replied automatically. Home was a safe, familiar thing to say, because everyone knew what it meant, even if he didn't. He had taught himself what to say, how to make sure that people thought they understood. But she wasn't going to let him get away with it.

"Where is home?" she wanted to know. He was stumped. No one was supposed to ask about home. He wasn't supposed to have to reply.

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to," she told him. Her eyes were looking him up and down, deciding what kind of home he _should _have, disregarding what he actually _did _have.

He knew he wasn't obligated to answer. But he wanted to. He wanted the questions to keep coming, and he wanted to be able to explain. He knew better than that, though. He looked down, avoiding her gaze, then snapped his eyes back up to meet hers. What if she never approached him again? What if this was the only opportunity he would ever have to see her face, close to his? It would be better that way, of course, but he still had to ask, _What if?_

But now she was the one to glance away. "Good-bye, Pein," she said. Good-bye was another safe thing to say. Even he knew what that meant.

As her body grew smaller and smaller until it turned into a dark blob on the horizon, he vowed that he would find out. He would find out where home was, and when he knew, he would tell her. Maybe he would even take her there. He hoped it would be a beautiful place, possibly beautiful enough for her.

Home. He would always be on the lookout for it, even though he knew better than that.

* * *

A/N: Wow, Pein and Blue really didn't sound like they were three and a half or seven. It's just so hard to imagine them as kids... sorry about that. And I know this was appallingly short, and I didn't explain anything properly, but keep in mind that this could be considered a kind of prologue, and those seem to be shorter and more obscure than actual chapters. The next chapter will most likely be longer, and won't keep you in the dark so much. Hope you liked it, and please, please review! 

P.S. Does anyone else find that they get most of their inspiration for writing between 11:30 and 1:00 at night?


	2. Chapter 2: Worse

Well, this chapter _is _longer than the first one, although I'm not sure by how much. I apologize for the lack of real action, but there will be some next chapter, and in the ones afterward too. I just had to make sure the background was understood first. And I know I needed to have the emotions and situations written down in black and white just as much as any reader - that's the way I am.

15 reviews for Chapter 1! Yay, that's a new record for me :) Thank you very, very much to everyone who read, and especially those who reviewed.

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Chapter 2 - Worse

It was difficult for her to glean any information, because every adult she approached was extraordinarily close-mouthed when it came to anything concerning him. They resented and discouraged her interest in him, but her blunt, demanding style could be very persuasive when used properly, and she eventually got what she asked for. Not all that she wanted, because their knowledge was sketchy at best, but enough to understand him a little better.

He was an outsider. Unwanted, unwelcome, unknown. He had been brought to the village of Rain as a tiny baby, carried by an ANBU squad returning from a mission. The ANBU members involved in his arrival had been taken aside and interrogated by the Elders, then sworn to secrecy. Since then not a word had been spoken about his mysterious past. By now, there were very few who _could _speak of his brief life before Rain. Most of the ANBU who had been present were now dead, weeded out by dangerous missions, whether on purpose or by chance she didn't know. And the Elders weren't giving anything away, obviously.

To tell the truth, she had always believed, in her subconscious, that he wasn't from here. His hair was more like sunshine than rain, and his eyes more like the ocean than a murky puddle.

His eyes - now there was an enigma. She remembered thinking how sublime their deep azure colour was when she first saw them. But after viewing them more closely, she had noticed that they were even more unique than she'd initially assumed. His irises were not simply blue, although that was stunning enough - they were divided into a circular pattern, into rings that encircled his pupils. It wouldn't have been noticeable, except that every ring was a slightly different shade - some greyish, some pale, some darker, but all together creating a brilliant, riveting cerulean. She could easily imagine them spinning, becoming hypnotic and ensnaring. In her opinion, they already were.

But perhaps they had their disadvantages too. Maybe it was because of those eyes that the Elders were so intrigued by him, so determined to make sense of him and pin him down. She often watched him, but now that she was older she noticed that she wasn't the only one. There were men around most of the time. They looked normal - they lounged around, sat on benches, leaned against trees, but they were always there. Observing him, most likely. What did they expect to see?

She was sure that he knew he was being spied on. He was always much more aware of everything than everyone else seemed to be. More aware than she was, though she hated to admit it. He talked less, so he listened more. He was distracted less, so he saw more. But she didn't think it was a healthy balance. She suspected that he heard and noticed things he wouldn't have chosen to, if it were up to him.

Sometimes she wanted to tell the strange, ever-present men to back off, to give him his privacy. But it wasn't her business, and she stayed out of it.

It was harder to stay out of it those evenings when she walked down the street and heard things on the wind that lingered in her head all night, pursuing her in her dreams. There were wails, agonized whines that broke off abruptly. And when the wind gusted particularly violently and noisily, there were screams. The screams didn't break off - they went on and on, echoing, rising in pitch and volume like an ear-shattering song, until the wind died down and the cries faded with it.

There was no way of knowing if it was him. They were the bawls of a child, the child Blue had never spotted in him, except for that one wave, six and a half years ago. The shrieking didn't sound like him. The wind, however, reminded her of him, very vividly. Not many people noticed the wind, because it blended in with all of the other elements they experienced day after day. But it could blow hard and long, and shoot out in uneven, jagged drafts. It could whisper quietly, and bend the tips of the grass. It could change moods at a whim, and no one even detected the difference. On those nights, she thought that the wind was his pain and his anger. The pain of Pein.

Pein. It was a short, simple name, one that bespoke very little effort on the part of the namer. Not a particularly pleasant name either. The "p" sound at the beginning was harsh and grating to a listener's ears, and the "ein" that followed it was like a plaintive whine. She wondered if it had any special meaning behind it - for someone like him, she couldn't believe an ugly, odd name would be chosen without reason. Well, it was _his _name. That was special, at any rate.

Yes, she understood him better now. But in a way it only made it worse, now that she knew exactly why he would always have to sit alone at the edge of the playground, why he could never be more than a very distant acquaintance, a part of the scenery. Why he couldn't tell her where home was.

"Pein," she said, very softly. Again, she saw him turn, eyes widening, just as he had three years ago. Somehow she couldn't leave it like that, couldn't let his name hang alone to vibrate in the air. "Blue," she added, even more softly. Pein. Blue. Short, plain names. But when put together, they had a kind of rhythm. She tapped the hard surface of the windowsill, twice. Once for him, once for her. But the taps were muffled, muted. They didn't resound as she wished they would. She rested her hand on the sill, trying to feel a pulse from it, something to infuse life into the two names she'd spoken. But nothing came, and she withdrew her hand. Her fingertips were icy.

She blew lightly on them, warming them with her hot breath. As the feeling returned, she almost wished the numbness wouldn't leave. But an eternal frostbite would not provide relief so much as complete desensitization, and she didn't want that.

Home. Maybe he would find it, someday. She hoped so. She hoped that the wind that led him there would be happy, pleasurable, rather than pain and fury-filled.

She prayed that he would never stop searching for it.

* * *

It figured that the girl furthest out of his reach would be the one who claimed his attention. Sometimes he thought there was a god named Irony out there, making jokes at his expense and laughing uproariously. 

Laughing. He wondered what that was like. He had a pretty good idea of how it felt to smile - he came very close to doing so, whenever she was nearby. But laughter was a sphere he didn't touch, something better left to people like her, who would never be burdened by people like him.

There was no need for questions in her case. No need for curiosity, although he had that anyway. She was the pride of Rain - a strong young kunoichi bursting with potential. Even attractive to look at, on top of all that. She was their hope, their promise of glory that was to come. She was everything they needed her to be - a gift. A prodigy.

Rain was deteriorating. The shinobi it produced were gradually decreasing in renown. It was no longer respected as a powerful ninja village. Most people, even the grown-ups, couldn't feel that, but he did. It was in the atmosphere, in the seasons. In the faces of the Elders when they looked at him and their foreheads creased in a way that told him pain approached. They had to groom her, make her perfect, and she was a good candidate, everyone knew it. Rain was withering and fading, and the Elders would do anything to reverse that.

Maybe that was the reason behind their relentless research of him. Maybe they thought that if they discovered the secret of his eyes, they could restore the town they had such high ambitions for to its former status. Maybe all of their poking and prodding and critical observation was justified.

That was harder to believe when he lay shivering on a long white mattress, strapped down with tubes and needles winding around his torso and sticking out of his arms and chest, trapped in the horror of a nightmarish genjutsu for hours on end. Or when a cold blade sliced through his skin, a bit deeper every time, and they all watched the blood pour from the wound, timing how long the healing took. The remote, scientific part of his mind could understand how they might find the speed of his heartbeat, his recovery rate, the colour of his blood, and everything else they measured without knowing what they were looking for, fascinating and useful. But the section of his brain that received the messages of _cutting _and _terror _and _imprisonment _and transformed them into a tangible, intolerable pain, could not.

He _hated _them. He hated those men who sat in a council and made the decision of what agony he would be subjected to next. He hated them so much that when he thought of them, his body lost all feeling. It could not hold, could not fathom the intensity and the passion of his hatred, so it didn't even try.

He hated them all, really. All of the people who looked away, who stopped talking when they noticed he was watching them, who hurried their children home with mistrustful glances when he was near. He was surprised at how easy it was to mask his loathing with indifference. It was necessary, however. He knew without a doubt that if they had an inkling of the profoundness of his emotion, they would eliminate him on the spot.

The only person he didn't hate was her.

Not hating her was unpleasant, because he knew that his non-hate could never become anything. His desire to touch her would only ever be that, a desire. His dream of meaning something to her would never be more than a mere unsatisfying dream. But hating her would be worse - it was unimaginable. So he hated himself instead, for the fantasies he couldn't help but tempt his heart with. For the visions that played like a movie inside his head.

It was supposed to be a fairy tale. But it ended up as more of a horror film.

Blue. Why did she exist? Was she sent to torment him? Did he live only to be punished?

Pein. His name was heart-wrenchingly accurate, even if the spelling was wrong.

Touch. Taste. Smell. See. Hear. Those senses were synonyms for pain receptors in his personal language. But he wouldn't give them up for the world, because if he lost them he would lose all ability to use them in relation to her. Maybe he had to employ those five human capabilities to find home, too. If he learned to work them to their fullest, he could possibly succeed. Then he would smell opportunity; he would see reason in all his turmoil. He would hear his own footsteps, and taste the bright future they guided him towards. He would touch her, in every way possible.

Optimism was a new concept for Pein. He found it ludicrous that such a weak, unreliable feeling could be so powerful. But if it could bring her to him, he would acknowledge its power freely. Yes, and bow to it too.

For now, he would head in the direction of home, and wait for his senses to catch up to his hope.

* * *

A/N: Wow, this chapter turned out a lot...angsty-er... than I expected, especially on Pein's side. But something happened while I was writing it that's never happened before - it was like a rush. It was intense, as if I were writing a particularly thrilling real-life experience drawn from personal memory, which I most certainly wasn't. Anyway, it was really cool, and I hope I get to feel it again. Just more unshakable proof that PeinBlue awesomeness! Thanks, and please review, because reviews almost as much awesomeness as PeinBlue. :) 


	3. Chapter 3: Disposal

Sorry there was so much time between updates, but this chapter is a bit longer to make up for it. It's sort of different from the first two - I'm always changing formats and styles. Well, hopefully you'll like it, and don't forget to review!

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Chapter 3 - Disposal

Pein sat at the back of the classroom. He didn't slouch - he sat straight and tall, listening attentively to the lesson. He was a model pupil. Or would have been, if the teacher had ever noticed his existence. People tended to overlook Pein, to place him in that overflowing category of things seen but not considered important enough to be properly registered by the mind. He expected that treatment by now, and hung on to every word of every lecture, knowing that he would not gain anything by asking, since no one would even pretend to hear his question. But, to his satisfaction, the number of prospective questions was drastically decreased if you actually paid attention and absorbed the information that came your way. That was his method, and it worked.

But today, listening brought him less pleasure, if you could call it that, than usual. The reason for this was the topic of discussion - the final exams, set for the following day. The much-awaited exams that would separate those who were ready to be ninja from those who weren't. They would decide who went on to Genin level, then onto Chuunin, and Jounin after that; into infinity and beyond.

Perhaps Pein was exaggerating a little. After all, the grass always looks greener on the other side. He was shrewd enough, even at twelve years old, to know that he would never be allowed to graduate with the other students. It would be against what the Elders called their "principles", principles being the fact that they deemed him unfit to progress further than the first stage, and therefore would hold him back, just in case. Just in case - what a stupid phrase. So incomplete, so lacking in supporting evidence.

Rain was a tight-knit, defensive village. They cared for their own, protected their own, and trained their own with an unrivalled zeal and fierceness that was admirable. The only problem was those two words, "their own". They rejected outsiders of every shape and size. No matter how young, how faithful you were, if you weren't one of them, they never let you forget it. Pein was living proof of that, and the worst thing was that he knew it. They kept him to see what new abilities they could extract from him, particularly his eyes. Once they'd discovered that, they would throw him out like an old diaper. Pein waited patiently for that to happen, and hoped that he would be able to gather himself up after their unceremonious disposal of him and make use of all the things he had that they would never see.

The mechanical part of Pein's mind that was keeping track of class understood that he was dismissed, and he put his books away. He knew it was foolish, but he had to ask anyway. So he approached the teacher's desk, arms at his sides, posture upright, shoulders squared, chin up. He was aware of the importance of presentation when everyone was judging you. "Sensei," he said, flawlessly polite, "I was wondering if I would be allowed to take the exams and go on to Genin level."

He waited, surreptitiously shifting his weight from foot to foot, chewing on the inside of his cheek. When the professor turned deliberately away to face the chalkboard, the only sign that he'd heard being a slight jump of his left eyebrow, Pein didn't have to have a good interpretation of body language to see the reply: _No._

He had known the answer, seen it coming from a mile away. But that didn't stop the crippling burn of disappointment from searing through his chest, any more than it quelled the feeling of hollow satisfaction that came from dumping every last one of his schoolbooks into the garbage can outside the classroom.

* * *

Blue smiled at the boy beside her. Fusao was handsome, to be sure, with glossy dark hair continually falling into his hazel eyes, and the carefree grin he reserved especially for girls. He was very sweet, too, and obviously smitten with her. His company was welcome, as he could keep up an engaging, intelligent conversation and was perfectly balanced in every area. He had a sense of humour, a lot of compassion and much skill on the training grounds. 

But she felt no desire to tell him her real name.

Few people outside her family knew her as anything besides Blue, and they rarely used the alternate title. She had chosen "Blue" herself, in a way - perhaps that was why she preferred it. During the first episode of her childhood, she had heard many remarks along the lines of, "Her hair is blue!" It was the first thing anyone said about her - her parents, the Elders, family friends, everyone. Despite her young age, she grew tired of hearing that phrase repeated, especially the word "blue" - it rankled in her mind. Finally, she decided to shorten the introductory process, so when her father took her to meet a man at his workplace, immediately upon seeing the stranger she pointed to herself (her hair, really, but they overlooked that), and said, very firmly, "Blue." And from that day on, she was Blue. She was proud of it now - proud that she had given herself such a suitable nickname.

There was only one person Blue would have liked to share her little-known birth name with, and that person was forever out of her reach. Besides, Fusao was talking to her, and it would be rude to let her attention wander.

"You have a nice smile," Fusao told her.

Blue smiled again, acknowledging the compliment. "Thank you." She was ashamed to find that she wasn't thinking of Fusao at all, but of someone else. Someone else whom, now that she thought of it, she had never seen smile, not once.

Fusao's hand found hers, and he clasped his fingers gently around her own. She didn't mind, really - his skin wasn't sweaty, but pleasantly warm and smooth. She turned her head to allow the sun to find her other cheek, and her gaze fell on the boy walking out of the academy. Well, not walking. He stood stock-still by the door, dazzling blue eyes fixed on her.

In a hasty, rough gesture, Blue tore her hand from Fusao's grip. Then, belatedly remembering that this would probably be hurtful to him, she quickly apologized, and her conscience was appeased to see the puzzled, pained look on his face replaced by a forgiving grin.

But a still stronger pang of guilt struck when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a bush of auburn hair vanishing into the trees.

* * *

That day, Pein wasn't unduly apprehensive when he spotted the men coming to fetch him. The tests and experiments were routine now, and he could bear them - that was one thing he'd come to know, at least. Besides, he almost hoped for some pain, to take his mind off of what he'd just witnessed. So he looked blandly up at the two burly shinobi in front of him, flanking a taller, more weatherbeaten man - one of the despised Elders. He didn't realize it, but his blank expression was very unnerving for most adults; it was like staring at a closed book with no title on the cover, something very strange in the face of a child. 

"Come," the Elder said, in the same deep, articulate voice that all Elders seemed to have. Pein differentiated very little between the tones of any of the heads of the city. He watched carefully, however, because this man was not one whom he had seen before. He came.

"Will you be performing the operation, Amekage-sama?" the man to the Elder's left asked, and the Elder nodded briefly. Pein's interest perked up. So he wasn't just an Elder, he was the Amekage, the greatest shinobi of the village and ruler of Rain. But what business did he have with Pein? What "operation"? Pein suddenly wanted to turn around and bolt, but he had no allies in Rain, or anywhere else for that matter. And the Amekage would catch him.

They led him to the dull building he knew well by now, but he didn't recognize the room he was taken to. It was stark white, with a bed in the middle, more spacious than Pein was used to. He was instructed to sit on the cot, and he perched uneasily on the edge.

"Such a serious face," the Amekage said, smiling at him. "But there is nothing to worry about." Pein did not return the smile - if this man was trying to comfort him, it wasn't having any effect. When there was comfort to be gotten, Pein comforted himself. But he found nothing soothing about this situation, and he trusted his instincts more than this Amekage person.

"Now, if you'll just lie down..." the Amekage began. They waited, but Pein remained sitting. Something was different from before, and there was no way he was going to let them touch him until he knew what it was. One of the guards barked impatiently, "Lie down!"

"What are you going to do?" Pein asked, unmoved.

The tension in the room heightened. The Amekage hesitated, then assumed a pleasant, reassuring tone. "It's simply a quick removal operation, nothing to get worked up over. We'll anaesthetize you, so you won't feel a thing."

Pein's heart was beating so hard that he could feel its jagged, irregular thumps reverberate throughout his entire body. "This is about my eyes again, isn't it?" he asked suddenly.

"Well...yes," the Amekage admitted reluctantly. "But you'll still have one, and that's plenty to see with, isn't it?" Pein stared at them, his eyes flickering to meet each of theirs in turn. He tried not to hyperventilate. They were going to remove one of his eyes? Take away half of his vision? He didn't care about anaesthetic, or simplicity, or any of that. But he didn't want to be...to be _mutilated_!

He had to get away. He couldn't wait until they disposed of him, not if they were going to do things like this first. And if they were willing to take out his eye, who knew what kind of unspeakable method of "disposal" they would use?

In a flash, Pein was at the door, and struggling to get out. But the guards were faster, and they caught him by the shoulders and dragged him back, spinning him around none too gently so that he faced the Amekage. "None of that, now!" the biggest guard said gruffly.

Pein was desperate. And as he stared into the fathomless black eyes of the Amekage, he felt a wild hatred surge up inside him, born of fear and long years of suffering. There was a strange kind of shifting behind his eyelids, as if the muscles that moved his eyeballs were rotating and twisting themselves. For a millisecond, the room became blurred, and then his sight sharpened. Details which he would have considered "fine" before were now easily visible. Colour was more defined - every line, every crease in the Amekage's face was apparent. Pein could see sparkles of something inside the depths of the man's eyes, and his own gaze glued itself to those little glints. His hatred whirled inside him like a hurricane, demolishing everything. The memories of pain and internal chaos ravished his body, snaking through his lungs, heart, throat, burning his eyes until they watered. He could feel the emotion spinning inside his head, pushing at the backs of his eyes, needing _out. _And suddenly he gave it _out._ He felt it rush from his eyes as clearly as if he'd thrown a poisoned dart - straight at the Amekage.

Indeed, the results were somewhat akin to a poisoned dart. The Amekage's own eyes widened, and he collapsed to the ground and writhed. No sound escaped his mouth, but it was obvious that he was in excruciating agony. The guards released Pein, rushing to their leader's side. His intense flare of hate leaving him as quickly as it had come, he stared, bewildered and mildly horrified, at what he knew he had caused. Then, his wits returning, he turned and sprinted from the room.

He ran down the stairs, ignoring the shouts behind him, and out the door, channelling Chakra into his legs for even more speed. But what had happened back there? It was as if his hatred had physically attacked the Amekage. But that wasn't possible...was it? Did it have something to do with his eyes? Was there something special about them after all?

The questions bombarded Pein's mind, but his adrenaline-driven body never stopped running. Someone was probably coming after him by now, and he had to hurry. Where to? _Where to?_

There was only one thing to do. Leave the village of Rain, and never return, unless he became powerful enough to have nothing to fear. He angled himself toward the main gates.

But when he reached them, he halted in dismay. There was another guard, standing by the gates! Stupid, how could he have forgotten that? He needed a plan, or perhaps a...distraction? He put his hands together into a simple handseal and whispered, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu." His replication appeared instantaneously, and waited expressionlessly to be directed by Pein.

Pein watched, praying, as his double stepped out of the trees and hurled a kunai at the guard. The guard shouted something unintelligible and whirled on him. Replication Pein threw another kunai for good measure and then took off running. As expected, the guard followed, cursing all the while. He probably expected to return to his post quickly. And he would - but by then, Pein would be out of town.

Once the guard was out of sight, Pein jumped to the ground and dashed toward the gates. Suddenly he sensed a foreign yet familiar presence nearby, just a moment before a hand caught his arm. He twisted abruptly, throwing his assaulter off balance, giving himself time to unearth a kunai and press it to the white neck of the person latched on to him. "Release me," he hissed. The person obeyed, and stood still, finally allowing Pein to get a look at them. He only needed to see the wisp of midnight blue hair that brushed his eye to know who it was, however.

"Blue...?!" he said, loosening his grip on her for a moment, then tightening it again. He couldn't afford to take chances.

She tried to breathe steadily and speak calmly, acutely aware of hard chill on the skin of her neck. "Where are you going, Pein?" She had been passing by through the forest when she had seen him running like there was no tomorrow. She had reached out and grabbed him without a thought, and was now regretting her impulsiveness.

"Away." His voice was harsher than she remembered it - not that she had heard him speak very often. It became even more clipped and cold as he asked, "Will you try to stop me?"

"No." She was definite about that. She wasn't going to fight him, and he was at the advantage right now. She hoped he would believe her. She believed _him. _And she wasn't sure whether he would actually kill her if she tried to stop him. He was only twelve, and they were not enemies - perhaps not friends either, but not enemies. But he had always been different, and she would not even venture to guess what went through his mind. No, that was untrue; she had often tried to guess his thoughts, with no success. After all, she was no mind reader, and he was anything but predictable.

In one smooth movement, Pein withdrew his kunai and took a step back. Blue faced him slowly, just in case he reconsidered, but he only allowed her to meet his eyes for a moment before turning and setting off at a run, passing over Rain's boundary line without hesitation, without a good-bye. Blue watched the tiny brown clouds of dust kicked up by his heels.

Suddenly she rushed up to the edge of the gates and yelled after his retreating figure, "Pein! My name is Konan!"

She thought she saw him look back at her, but she might have imagined it. She continued to give her imagination free rein as she stood there, staring at nothing. Reality returned with a thump when a hard voice broke through her stupor. "Blue-chan, have you seen the outsider boy? Pein?" It was the guard, panting and seeming very disgruntled.

"I think..." Blue began, then paused. The guard paused too, waiting for her to finish. "I think he's gone."

* * *

A/N: Voila chapter 3. I haven't got much to say...except that the next few chapters may take a lot of work, so don't expect updates too quickly. Besides that, thanks for reading and please review - all comments and criticisms are appreciated! 


	4. Chapter 4: Ready

Sorry I took so long with this chapter, but it was being very difficult. I'd sit down at my desk very determinedly and say to myself, "I'm going to _write._" Then I'd pick up my pen, and think...and think...and think...and then, twenty-five minutes later, realize I'd just wasted twenty-five minutes of my life being completely unproductive, with a blank page staring me in the face and an equally blank mind. I got through it, though, and all's well that end's well, right?

I'm not sure how this chapter will be received, for two reasons in particular - first of all, there is no Konan in this chapter, since Pein set off on his own. I know, I was disappointed too - the whole time I was writing, I kept on feeling like Konan was standing in the corner, tapping her foot and waiting for some screen time, and I couldn't give it to her. Secondly, this will be my first real attempt at an OC, which may or may not be complete crap. If it is, please don't soften the blow. Tell me exactly what you think, and how I can improve it. Thanks for staying with me:)

* * *

Chapter 4 - Ready

Pein hadn't exactly expected the world to shower him with thrills the moment he stepped outside of his bubble, but he certainly _hadn't _expected the monotony. He ploughed through weeks of interminable dullness, even if nothing was commonplace. The trees were beautiful, with their multi-shaped and multicoloured leaves, and the flowers along the side of his path were each unique if you looked closely enough. The sky was pretty, even when grey and clouded, and reminded Pein of how small he was. But he didn't mind being small - after all, if you were big enough to see everything, there would be nothing to wonder about.

But despite all this, "interminable dullness" was the only phrase for what Pein experienced. The magnificence was there, of course. But the movement was not. Pein knew that plants grew and reproduced, but it was a slow process, invisible to the impatient human eye. It was all so stationary, sometimes almost fooling Pein into believing he was walking through a painting. The artist was gifted, but it was still just a painting. How could Nature stand to just sit there and grow older? How did that classify it as "alive"? Then again, he wasn't much better. He was moving steadily forward, but he was getting nowhere. And nowhere was really starting to get on his nerves.

He had to admit, though, there was something liberating about wandering without purpose. Having no ties to any person or place left you unrestrained. This new freedom was what enabled Pein to endure the hunger pangs, stomach the food, more often than not inedible, that he foraged amateurishly from forests, and to walk through the many phases his tired legs were subject to - first the jelly state, then the brittle, rickety stage, finally hardening to a toughened soreness. And so on he trudged, on to Nowhere. There were worse places to be.

Just when he thought "somewhere" was simply a figment of his imagination, he finally escaped Nowhere. It would be a turning point in his mangled upbringing.

* * *

Pein was conflicted when he reached a village after many days of trekking. He was a bit tired of the solitude, but just seeing a town reminded him of things he'd rather forget. He controlled himself and entered anyway, all senses and instincts on triple alert. He wasn't known here. Nothing would happen.

He breathed a little easier once he had reached what he assumed was the centre of town without dilemma. It didn't take long to find - this was a minor, low-key location. And it didn't seem to be a shinobi village, judging from the lack of guards at the main gates, which pleased Pein even more.

There was a marble fountain in the square, depicting a seal, originally white but now flecked with grey and brown. A weak stream of water trickled from the seal's mouth. The stone was filthy and the carving was not particularly well done, but Pein made no criticisms as he let his fingers dangle in the murky liquid. He twirled his index absentmindedly, creating a mini-whirlpool in the fountain.

Just then, a small splash broke through his reverie as something light but solid bounced off his knuckles to land in the pool at his fingertips. He snatched his hand out of the water quickly, wet droplets raining onto his shirt. Hearing a giggle from behind him, he spun around. He let out an involuntary gasp as he took in the girl who stood there, her hands clasped together at her breast. She had _blue hair. _

But wait...it wasn't _her. Her _hair was a darker shade of blue, and the lines on _her _face curved differently. This girl smiled nervously and said, "Did I hit you? I'm sorry, I was just tossing a penny into the fountain." Pein's gaze flickered backward, and he caught of flash of copper lying on the marble bottom of the fountain.

When he didn't reply, the girl, looking anxious and perplexed, said, "Um...I'm...sorry. Good-bye." She sidled away, staring at him the whole time. Pein didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. If it _had _been _her, _what would it have meant?

He had to shake this. She was days, weeks, months behind him. It could be years for all the difference it would make. Heck, it could be _centuries. _The distance was there, and even if he tracked her down, even if he stood across from her, he would never be able to take that last step that would bring him close to her. He didn't know if this was metaphorical or literal, and it didn't really matter. Maybe a metaphor was all that he had, now that he was stripped of pretenses.

Pein slid to the ground, resting his back against the fountain and pulling his legs up to touch his chest. Sitting that way, he could almost completely relax. It was kind of nice, he reckoned, just to observe, when you knew no one was observing you.

There was such diversity everywhere, even in a tiny place like this. Every face he saw was different. Pein didn't think of beauty or ugliness as he watched - he was only interested in the individuality of every single feature. His fist clenched when he thought of how some people mistrusted that uniqueness, even tried to exploit it. He squished his palm into the cobblestone under him, embedding minute dirt fragments into his skin. _Why _couldn't he let go of his former life?

"You all right?" A voice cut through Pein's stupor, and he was jolted out of his mind's realms for the second time in an hour. He was on his feet in a flash, one hand groping for the holster wrapped around his leg, although a little more hesitantly than usual - he was down to his last kunai, having lost most of them in his inexperienced attempts at hunting.

He was forced to tilt his head back to see his disturber, for he was tall. Pein's eyes travelled up a stolid, well-built adult body, covered with a brown shirt, buttoned only halfway up, and baggy black pants, rolled up all the way to the knee. He couldn't help but notice the plentiful amounts of hair on the bare legs and arms, but chose to ignore that in favour of the face.

It was certainly an attractive visage, in a rough way. Dark stubble gathered around the mouth, the beginnings of a beard. The mouth itself was twisted upward at the right corner in a friendly, if slightly cynical, grin. The nose was large, but straight and right on centre. The eyes were neither narrow nor wide, but an average oval shape, with hazel irises and pale lashes. Messy, side-swept chestnut hair framed the face, long enough for its last strands to brush the square, hard jaw. The only marring feature was a zigzagging scar along the left cheek.

The stranger nodded at Pein, saying, "Your kunai supply seems a bit depleted." He held out two daggers, clasped in one gigantic, calloused palm. Pein stared - he hadn't even seen the man reach for the kunai. His movements were fast! "Take them."

Pein accepted the ninja blades tentatively, asking, "Are they yours?"

"Not anymore," the stranger replied, with an easy grin.

"Where did - where did you pull them from?" Pein had to inquire. It sounded like a stupid question, something a total amateur would ask, but ignorance, even when it came to little things, frustrated Pein.

The man laughed - he had a deep, rich laugh, one that matched his equally full voice perfectly. "You don't want to know."

Pein looked at the kunai suspiciously, hoping that didn't mean what he thought it did, and wiped the blades on the side of the marble fountain before pocketing them with a curt word of thanks.

The man laughed again and smiled even more broadly. "I like you already!" He looked triumphant for some reason, as if Pein's "likeableness" was his doing. "Hey, can I buy you a drink or something?"

"...All right," Pein agreed. After all, it would be foolish to turn down an offer of free nourishment. But he was mystified as to this stranger's intentions - surely it wasn't common behaviour to randomly hand someone two kunai and then invite them out?

Pein followed the man down an alleyway and into a grubby pub, where they chose a table for two and sat across from each other. There was a couple of minutes' silence between them, until finally the stranger guffawed and said, "Playing the waiting game, are we? I don't think I have a hope of winning this round - everything about you is too quiet."

Pein was indifferent to this comment. It wasn't really an insult, was it? But there was something peculiar about this guy, specifically his laugh. He laughed a lot, and seemed to enjoy doing so. But in his eyes, Pein saw...well, it wasn't exactly that the laughs were _fake _so much as they were only maybe a quarter of what really lay behind this figure.

The man, sobering a bit, leaned forward slightly and proceeded with the introductions, albeit in a unique, roundabout way.

"What say we try a different game? This one's fun, trust me." There was a roguish gleam of challenge in his hazel eyes, making them resemble churning maple syrup. "Wanna hear the rules?"

Pein started to carefully assess the offer, then threw caution to the wind and accepted. Why not dash headlong into something unknown for once? Wasn't that what youth was supposed to be for?

"All right!" the man spoke with almost childish glee, but the delight had harsh, foreign undertones, as Pein had perceived earlier with his laughs. "So, here's how you play - you guess everything about me. Whoever you think I am, you tell me. My past, my age, my dislikes - feel free to touch on any area you like, as long as what you say is your opinion based on your first impression of me. And don't be afraid of offending me - the more ludicrous and insulting it is, the harder I'll laugh."

Pein nodded slowly, believing him. This guy seemed to be nothing more than an overgrown child, still living in the simple pleasures of the early years. But "seemed to" felt like the key phrase - there had to be more under the surface. "What's your role in this game?" he asked.

"After your turn, I get to guess about _you_," the man said with a smirk and a shrug.

Pein decided to oblige this eccentric stranger, for now at least - but he'd make him come clean about his intentions later. So he put his powers of observation and analysis to work, and drew as many conclusions as he could.

"You are 28 years old," Pein began matter-of-factly, as if this wasn't all just guesswork. "You are a shinobi..." _But he has no forehead protector, and no holster...yet he had kunai..._"a _former _shinobi. You live alone, and you find yourself distanced from other people, whether it's your doing or theirs." Pein thought of the callous ring that he heard in the man's light, teasing voice. "You were affected by a painful, scarring experience at some point in your life, but have by now managed to get over it - almost. Your smiles and laughs are only half of who you are, but your darker side emerges rarely. You are reasonably well off, and reasonably happy with your present reality." He searched for a line to end with. "You're... regretful. Of a lot of things." _Wait, where did _that _come from? _

There was silence, something that seemed out of place for Pein's new companion. Pein found it surprisingly difficult to look into this man's eyes. They were strangely juvenile, but powerful too. And right now all of their attention was concentrated on Pein. He had spent most of his life being examined - so why did the intense gaze of one ordinary man make him squirm?

Then a grin spread over the man's face, and he practically crowed, "I always choose well, but this is unbelievable! _You're _unbelievable. You were a little off on the age, but otherwise you hit the nail on the head. Fantastically perceptive."

Pein opened his mouth to ask what exactly he meant by _choosing well,_ but he was interrupted as the man said enthusiastically, "Well, anyway, you earned the right to know my name with your cleverness. I'm Jinsei. And now it's my turn."

Jinsei, as he proclaimed himself, assumed a look of extreme focus and stared at Pein. It was as if Jinsei's eyes were controlled by a radio dial, and he had just turned it up to full volume and tuned out all the static. Pein wished it was so, because then he could have reached out and switched off the gaze that was making him feel like he was being flipped inside out. But that wasn't an option, so Pein forced himself to make eye contact. This man was welcome to whatever he could read in Pein in his most unreadable mode.

To his relief, Jinsei dropped his gaze first. When he spoke, his voice was the tiniest bit shaky. "Those are some powerful eyes you've got there, kid," he said - approvingly, Pein thought. "But even a glance is enough to tell me that's not all you've got, by far."

Pein waited, and he wasn't disappointed when the man spilled his thoughts. "Starting with the obvious, you're a ninja. Lacking the customary forehead protector, so you must be an undergraduate. I'd say you're around fifteen. You know pain - I guess that makes us kindred spirits, sort of." At this he forced a laugh, and the harshness was more apparent than ever. "You're confident about your own abilities, but insecure about everything and everyone else. You seem intelligent, and your observational powers go without saying. You have a lot of potential for a lot of things, but you aren't sure if you're reading to fully develop it."

Pein's eyes narrowed. For some reason, that last line smelled of weakness. "I'm ready," he said.

Jinsei grinned. "Don't get defensive - I'll take your word for it."

Pein felt cheated somehow. Everything that made other people quiver or take offence, this man laughed at. For a moment, the air between them seemed to acquire a thick, stifling quality, but the sensation was dispelled by the arrival of a surly-looking waiter who brought them drinks. Jinsei lazily tossed him a few coins, then resumed the conversation.

"One of the more specific things you didn't guess is that I'm a piercing artist," Jinsei explained. "I don't really do it for a living; it doesn't work that way. People don't come to me to ask for their faces or ears pierced, I come to them. I choose my clients by the face, and decorating them is my only reward. It's an oddity of mine - there's just something about certain faces that calls to me. It's how I chose you. You have a very interesting face, and I now think that you're my best selection yet. I must be getting good at this." He looked proud of himself.

"So...you want to pierce my face." Pein tried to condense the bizarre recital into a clear sentence.

"With your permission, yes," Jinsei said. "With a face like yours, who knows what I could do!"

Pein was about an inch from dismissing this personage as a lunatic, but then he reflected that maybe this was just what he was looking for - a way to cut loose, to let go of his old trials with a bang and a fresh start. A way to be reckless, to gamble all he had left - which was virtually nothing, so what did he have to lose?

"Why not?" The words came out monotone, but they were enough to light up Jinsei's face. He stood, then sat back down abruptly and said, "Wait! First, was I right in my observations? Are you really fifteen?"

_Fifteen? _Pein thought, slightly amused. _Only three years off...but wait, it's probably better to pretend I'm older. The less young and inexperienced I seem, the less vulnerable I'll appear. _"That's right," he agreed. "I'm fifteen. And you..._may _have been right about some of the rest, too." Pein was deliberately vague. Telling people about yourself was like arming them with a weapon that they would inevitably use against you.

Jinsei looked pleased at his success (did he suspect a lie?) and beckoned to Pein. They left the pub together. Pein was surprised that Jinsei didn't ask for his name, and said as much. "You can tell me if you want to," was Jinsei's easygoing reply. "If you don't, that's your business."

* * *

They reached Jinsei's residence after only a few minutes' walk. It was a small, sturdy stone house, with more windows than Pein had ever seen in one structure. "To let the light in," Jinsei said, with a smile. Many times it crossed Pein's mind that he was being rash, entering a stranger's home to get his face pierced, of all the absurd things to do. But he ignored his qualms. He was free now, and he was going to make use of his newfound impulsiveness.

The interior of the building was much like the exterior - plain but durable and cozy-looking. Pein's attention was immediately grabbed by the far wall of the main room. Upon it hung a large assortment of weapons - there was an ample supply of kunai and shuriken, as well as a few katanas and various other swords and daggers. To his discomfort, the blanketed table Jinsei motioned for him to sit on happened to be right next to this "weapons wall", but he pretended to be unaffected by their proximity. After all, he had kunai of his own. And the knives on the wall looked rusty, as if they hadn't been used in a while.

"Lie down," Jinsei ordered. Pein was reminded of an instant not so long ago when someone else had given the same command, with catastrophic results, and he hesitated briefly before obeying. Jinsei noticed, and said teasingly, "Having second thoughts yet?"

"No," Pein replied emotionlessly. Jinsei laughed. "Don't worry, you soon will be, once the needle gets close to your skin," he said, not at all ridding Pein of any apprehension.

Pein watched him from his position stretched out on the table, and asked suddenly, "If you're a piercing expert, why don't you have any piercings yourself?"

In answer, Jinsei stuck out his tongue. At first Pein thought he was being childishly rude, but then he saw the glint of silver against the reddish, textured surface of the tongue. Jinsei had three piercings, all of them set into his tongue in a triangular formation.

Pein inhaled so quickly his ribs stung for a moment, then returned to his composure, disappointing Jinsei, who looked as if he'd been looking forward to the expression on Pein's face.

_With that much metal in his mouth, shouldn't he have a speech impediment? _Pein wondered, and was glad he'd signed up for the face rather than the tongue treatment.

"I stopped being fond of my own face, so I went for the tongue instead," was Jinsei's explanation. Pein didn't know if he was joking or not.

He was a bit surprised to find himself reassured by this discovery. After all, if Jinsei could pierce his own tongue without suffering any ill effects, doing the same to a face should be a snap, right? He found, though, that Jinsei's words about having second thoughts were ringing truer every second. He made himself breathe evenly, and focused carefully on the tools Jinsei held - if they slipped up in the slightest, he was out of here. But, he told himself, this wasn't an experiment - this was a non-harmful operation _he'd agreed to. _Those last three words were enough to calm him down exponentially.

"Relax," Jinsei advised him. "I didn't know it was possible to tense your _face muscles, _but that's what you're doing." Easier said than done for Pein, who only relaxed in his deepest slumbers.

The process itself turned out to be relatively painless, actually. There was a brief sting every time Jinsei made a hole with the needle, but the oily substance rubbed over the area and the icy metal pressed into his flesh immediately afterward erased the ache. Pein could feel the skill in Jinsei's hands - their surface was rough, but their touch was gentle and quick. After a minute Jinsei paused in his work and asked, "Hey, how far am I allowed to go with this, anyway? Can I go all out, or do you want me to keep it simple and conservative?"

Pein seriously doubted anyone could call getting your face pierced "conservative", but he decided to let his radical streak dominate for just a little longer. "Do as you please," he said indifferently. The look of absolute, almost manic excitement that appeared on Jinsei's features alarmed him for a moment, but his pride was sufficient to make him bite back any reconsideration he might have voiced.

After a while he became quite comfortable, lying there letting Jinsei's expert fingers play along his skin. He itched to see the results of the labour, however - he wasn't sure whether to dread or anticipate them. When Jinsei withdrew, looking satisfied, Pein sat up and accepted the handheld mirror he was offered with a confusing mix of emotions.

Pein gawked at himself. He was...different. Along either side of the bridge of his nose was a row of three black studs. A couple more connected the wrinkles on his chin. There were six small rings along the outer edge of both of his ears, as well as a fairly thick black bar that was practically inside his ear, attached at the earlobe and the top of the auricle.

He looked strange, defiant, and rebellious, like a new person. Not like Pein. Well, like Pein, yes, but an alter ego Pein, someone who made choices because they pleased him and no one else, someone who wasn't going to conform to anybody's idea of anything. He reached up to stroke his facial ornaments in wonder.

Jinsei chuckled, and Pein turned to look toward him. The older man grinned and said, "You weren't ready before. But you sure as hell are now."

Pein examined his reflection once again, and kind of liked what he saw.

* * *

A/N: Well, there we are, Chapter 4! Most of you are probably thinking there was major OOC-ness on Pein's part, and I have to agree, but remember that he's not fully developped into the silent, stone-cold adult we know yet, and he's also had bad experiences with lying on tables having people mess around with his body, which could explain his uncharacteristic anxiety with Jinsei.

Speaking of Jinsei, please tell me what you think of him! If you hate him, don't be too depressed, because he shouldn't be featured in the story for more than two or three chapters. Also, what about the whole explanation behind Pein's excessive piercings? Stupid? Derived (I think that's the word I want...)? Unrealistic? Acceptable?

I'm starting to babble, so I'll stop. There's just such a large variety of adjectives:P As always, thanks for the support and feedback, and please review - I'm especially worried about this chapter, so whether you want to calm my fears or further aggravate them, do so. Thank you!


	5. Chapter 5: Unremarkable

I actually finished writing this chapter just a couple of days after posting the previous one, but I was really slack about typing and updating - sorry about that. Hopefully the writing and content will help to make up for the wait! This chapter had a mind of its own; the last half careened out of control. Well, as long as it doesn't jeopardize the plot, right?

Thanks for all your support with this story - I've hit 50 reviews:) Also, due to revelations from the latest manga chapter (371), this story has now become AU. That kind of makes me sad, I like sticking to canon. But no way am I going to go back and change things, so I'll push forward with what I have so far. Now, on to Chapter 5.

* * *

Chapter 5 - Unremarkable

Blue broke up with Fusao shortly after Pein's departure. It wasn't that she didn't like him - it was just that every time he held her hand or smiled at her, she imagined someone else in his place. And that wasn't fair to either of them. She didn't get a new boyfriend; somehow, she knew it wouldn't work out.

But she moved on, in spite of her heart's desire to lag behind. She overcompensated by pushing further ahead than ever. Her brain had an odd notion that if she got far enough, she could escape her memories. Sometimes she would question if this was what she really wanted, but never for long. Blue was a girl of convictions, not doubts.

She had graduated from the Academy with ease, and she admired the way the silver-plated forehead protector, with its four short lines symbolic of Rain, contrasted with the dark background of her hair. She had listened to the teachers' speech for the graduates, and felt proud to be wearing the sign of her village. She had been assigned to a Genin team whose members she got along with fairly well, and her teacher was competent. Life was flowing smoothly, and no storms threatened to overturn Blue's pristine sailboat.

But that only made her wonder how many waves there would be if he were still around.

Blue was popular. She attracted many friends, and never had to be alone. She fit in perfectly. Everyone was interested in her and what she did. They listened to her ideas, they complimented her. She was nurtured to be smart, strong and confident, and that was what she was. She liked herself, and she liked her situation. Only occasionally would she be reminded of something lacking.

One of the foremost examples of this took place at the training grounds one afternoon. She had been matched against an older boy who had recently passed the Chuunin Exams. He was not pleased, thinking that a rookie Genin wouldn't provide much exercise for his abilities. Blue was not particularly ecstatic, either - he had a stuck-up, superior attitude she detested.

Fifteen minutes into their fight found Blue at a disadvantage, due to smaller stature, slower speed and less attacking experience. Her partner thought it would be amusing to taunt her.

"Are your eyes open, Blue-_chan_?" he asked, sniggering as yet another kunai skimmed across her cheek, leaving a thin trail of blood behind. "You fight like you're sleepwalking."

She cursed him internally, but refused to be baited. How dare he call her Blue-chan in that mocking tone of voice, implying that she was a pathetic child? She was almost thirteen, and not to be trifled with.

"Or are you distracted?" he continued to try to get a rise out of her. He smirked as he suggested, "Thinking about some auburn-haired freak with pretty eyes, maybe?"

Blue flinched. Had her interest in Pein been so obvious? Struggling to stay on her feet as he sent a huge gust of wind her way, she shouted defiantly, "Well, at least he's worth thinking about, unlike you!"

But her opponent smiled in victory. He had finally found a tender spot to prod. "Did you _cry _when he left, poor baby?" he sneered. "Did you cry for the weirdo that nobody liked?"

This conversation was rousing Blue far more than the battle ever had. "Shut up!" she yelled. "He wasn't a weirdo!" It wasn't fair for anyone, especially someone like him, to criticize Pein. Nobody had known Pein, because no one had bothered to. They had no right to soil his name like they had any idea of what lay behind it!

The expression on the boy's face was getting uglier by the second, and Blue knew her own must be the same. She couldn't even recall what he'd said to make her feel anger of this calibre, but he was going to get it now.

"Why are you defending him?" the boy wanted to know, his brow now wrinkled not only in mockery but also in confusion. "You know what he did, don't you? He sent Amekage-sama into a coma that he still hasn't recovered from, and it's been months!"

The words were out of Blue's mouth before she could understand their implications. "Well, maybe the Amekage deserved it!"

The boy stopped fighting her and stared, eyes wide. Blue realized exactly what she'd said, and all of a sudden her adrenaline left her, pushed out to make room for shock. Her knees buckled and she fell to the ground, her chin thudding onto a tree root.

"That's - that's treason!" the boy spluttered. Blue watched, panting heavily, as his expression became scornful and accusing. "Huh. You're just as much of a freak as he was." Then he turned on his heel and left, leaving her sprawled in the dirt.

Blue clenched her teeth so hard blood seeped out of her gums and dripped onto her lips. She licked them and spat out a mouthful of a red-stained saliva. She pushed herself up painfully onto her elbows. Did she really believe what she'd said a moment ago? Would she really take his side rather than Rain's?

And why was it that every time she thought of him, life became more complicated?

* * *

Blue's thirteenth birthday was a day of many significances. First of all, it was the moment of official transition into the teenage period of life. She was excited, because even if everything looked and felt the same now, she knew it would be different soon. Especially as she would be taking the Chuunin Exams in less than a week. 

On this day, she got up and examined herself in the mirror, something which she rarely did due to a distinct lack of vanity. It might have been her imagination reacting to her anticipation, but it seemed to her that her eyes glowed a little brighter, and her cobalt hair was a tad darker, a millimetre longer. She smiled at herself, a tentative smile that grew confident and rejoicing in a matter of seconds. She liked the way her lips parted to reveal just enough of her teeth, the white gleaming through the rose. Today she felt grown-up, knowledgeable, and beautiful.

Winding her glossy hair into a ponytail with experienced ease, Blue joined her parents at the breakfast table. "Good morning, Blue," her father said, serious as ever as he concentrated on his newspaper, while her mother greeted her with an upbeat "Happy birthday, dear!"

"Thanks," Blue said, sliding into her chair and taking a slice of toast. She was eager for nourishment this morning. "What's in the news, Otousan?" she asked, feeling amiable enough to sit through a long-winded criticism of world leaders and their stupid choices.

Unusually, her father paused before launching into his summary of current events. Blue, glancing up at the silence, could tell from the stressed angling of his eyebrows that his next statement would be important, and most likely unpleasant.

"They've taken Amekage-sama off of Chakra sustainment. They figure that it's been so long, he doesn't have a chance of waking from his coma. He's dead."

Blue chewed her bread robotically, stricken by her father's blunt words. She stared at the blue-and-white checkered tablecloth in front of her, all of the thrill of her birthday gone. Her mother noticed and said gently, "Sad, isn't it?"

Blue nodded automatically, but that wasn't exactly what she was thinking. Her mind was fixed on someone besides the Amekage - a certain someone who was now guilty of murder, at the age of twelve. She was horrified and repulsed, but her curiosity was devouring her. What had happened that afternoon, one year ago, when a boy had been driven out of town? But by what? And what could have prompted him to try to fatally injure the Amekage - and succeed?

No one ever talked about that, and it frustrated her. Why were there never any details??

She downed the last of her juice and swallowed the rest of her food, just to convince her parents that she was all right, and stood up, tightening the knot that kept her forehead protector snug to her head. "Bye, Kaasan, Otousan," she said. "I'm going to training now."

But she'd lied, and she didn't really feel remorseful as she set her foot on the doorstep. She wasn't going to train today. She was going to do some research.

* * *

Blue started with the library. That was the only centre of knowledge she knew of. The only problem was, how could she use its resources? She had no idea where to look, and she found it discouragingly simple to predict the negative reaction she'd get if she asked for help. Why didn't they teach information extraction techniques at the academy? 

Generalize. That's what she had to do - just make her inquiries less specific. Putting on a politely interested, business-like confident façade, she smiled charmingly at the librarian and asked, "Excuse me, but I was wondering if you have individual records of people living or who previously lived in Rain. It's for an...educational project."

The librarian was surprised, but she was disarmed by Blue's respectful demeanour and replied pleasantly, "We haven't got anything like that here, but I know they keep files of that sort in the Amekage's residence. They may let you have a look if you ask there, although they aren't commonly given out to the public."

"Oh. Thank you," Blue said, and was out on the street in a flash. This next part would be challenging - she'd have to be extra careful about what she said and didn't say, if she wanted to gain access to confidential documents.

Twenty minutes later, she found herself standing in front of the secretarial desk at the Amekage's abode, half-truths spilling from her mouth like a punctured bucket. "I'm working on an educational project," she told a bored-looking attendant. "If it's possible, I'd like to see some records of Rain inhabitants."

"Inhabitants like who?" the attendant asked, biting the tip of a pen so hard Blue thought she heard the sucking sound of tooth enamel sinking into rubber.

"The First Amekage," Blue replied promptly, saying the first thing that popped onto her tongue.

"Well, normally it's not allowed, but..." the attendant said, speaking very clearly considering she seemed to be doing her best to eat a writing utensil. "Whatever, I'm not in the mood to argue with any brats today. Just go to the back storage room. Look in the "A" cabinet for Amekage."

_Or how about the "P" cabinet? _Blue thought, but she didn't say it out loud, instead bowing deeply and scurrying off, thanking God for lazy secretaries. She wasn't daunted by the mountains of steel cabinets filling the storage room. Her eyes glued themselves to the letters plastered on each shelf. A...not that she actually wanted that one...E...K...N...O...P! She was banking on Pein not having a last name, since he was a foundling child. And she was right, judging from the beige folder labelled P-e-i-n. She pulled it out and opened it eagerly. It contained just two pages and a bunch of photographs. Blue scanned the papers first. The first one read:

_Pein_

_Origins: Unknown. Found in woods northwest of Konohagakure at approximately 18 months of age, and brought to Amekagure by an ANBU team._

_Current status: Shinobi student at Amekagure Ninja Academy._

_Current age: 12 years_

_Defining characteristics: Spiky, auburn-tinted hair, thin, of average height. Pale-skinned. Quiet, non-disruptive, unremarkable except for eyes, which are blue and multiple-ringed. _

_Powers: Unknown. Potentially dangerous - must be kept under strict surveillance. In-depth research and examinations are being made. _

Over top of all this was scrawled in bright red: INFORMATION NULLIFIED - REBEL-NIN; WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN.

Blue scoffed. Unremarkable? Certainly not. They obviously hadn't kept him under very high-quality surveillance. But she didn't quite like the sound of "in-depth research and examinations". The big words had an ominous undertone.

The second page in the folder was a list of facts, seemingly pertaining to Pein's health - heart rate, blood pressure and type, and various other bodily functions, very closely monitored. The details were astonishingly specific, however - she wondered how they had managed to collect such precise data. The photos she pulled out next answered that all too completely.

They were...graphic. They were disgusting and indecent. Blue's insides spun and lurched as her eyes roved over the pictures. Pein lying on a bed, his bare chest sliced open. One wrist slit, a line of blood running down his hand. Sitting up, face tight, needles sticking out of his back. And some of them showed him very young, too - just a few years old, already bloody, already suffering. Others were too revolting to describe. Blue could think of nothing that would justify running such damaging tests on a child.

For some reason, the image she found the most heart-wrenching was a recent one of Pein that depicted him seated on a bench, staring at the camera unsmilingly. It was normal - no cuts, no tubes, no examination tables. But that was the saddest thing of all - that he had to sit there, acting like an ordinary boy, when he must have been aching so badly. When no one was letting him be ordinary.

Blue shoved the photographs back into the folder, stuck it roughly into its cabinet and slammed it shut. She couldn't look at those pictures any longer. She wasn't squeamish, but at the moment she wanted to throw up. No, actually she wanted to strangle someone - whoever was responsible for this abomination.

Who had been in charge of this? The Amekage, probably. May his soul rot in Hell! Who else had known? How many village adults? Had her own parents known, and approved? Blue jumped up, fighting to quell her thoughts, and noticed one photo lying on the floor. It was the one that had made her feel particularly outraged, the "normal" one. She hesitated, then pocketed it.

She literally sprinted outside, so intense was her desire to get away from - _that. _She stopped by a small brook, and stood in the grass at its edge as the sky clouded over, pushing the sun out of the way, and the rain began to fall. It was funny the way it could go from sunshine to downpour in just a moment. Life, and the weather, were weird and unpredictable. And so hard on the hearts of the young and naïve.

Slowly Blue untied her forehead protector. She was sorely tempted to cast it off to float down that brook, gone forever. Maybe the rain would pound on it forcefully enough to wash the village symbol off, and then it would be smooth and clean and shiny. But still tainted. She held the dripping cloth and wet silver in her hand, gripping it with all her strength, trying to squish it into scrap metal. She had never hated anything more than she loathed this simple object. She had once been so proud of it! But what was underneath the pride? Shame and revulsion. Everyone dug it up someday.

She put the band back on, jerking it so tight it hurt her brain. It was her future; she couldn't throw it away. She took out the photo she'd swiped from the Amekage's residence and stared at it. Raindrops pattered down, blurring its glossy finish, ruining the normalcy that had never been there in the first place. Then, on impulse, she plunged a kunai through the centre of the picture and dropped it into the brook, watching as it sunk out of sight underneath the clear waters, weighed down by the dagger.

_Sorry, Pein. You're not unremarkable, and I can't just leave you out in the rain. _

* * *

A/N: I originally intended to have Konan find out about Pein's experiences much later, but she just couldn't let it go, so I gave her the information. She can be so obstinate! I hope you didn't mind my continued use of "Blue" rather than Konan, but since I explained in Chapter 3 that it was her nickname and preferred title, I had to leave it that way. 

Also, a note I should have added two chapters ago, which I'm surprised no one has remarked and criticized: there is no such thing as an Amekage in the real manga. The closest thing is the Mizukage, but I didn't feel that this was connected closely enough to Rain to be valid, so I invented another Kage for my story. Just think of the Amekage as a lower-class Kage but still a powerful ninja, the leader of Rain. There, that's cleared up. :)

Once again, thank you very much, and please don't forget to review. Reviews are my food, drink and oxygen!


	6. Chapter 6: Nothing

Voila Chapter 6. I don't think I made you wait _too _long for this, did I?

WARNINGS: Amateurish action scene, some friendship fluff, angst. Other than that, the usual.

* * *

Chapter 6 - Nothing

That first day, Jinsei asked, "Will you stay the night?" and Pein accepted. After all, what better way to grow accustomed to these piercings than with a master of the art?

Every night after that, Jinsei would extend the same invitation. And Pein would seriously consider his decision before replying in the affirmative. There were many reasons to stay, of course. Jinsei was a former ninja, and a good one at that. He was more than willing to teach Pein the tricks of the game, and he was a jovial companion who knew much of the world. But most of the reason Pein never left was because of the way Jinsei listened to him, like he cared about what he said, and talked to him like he cared about what he heard. Because with Jinsei, Pein was beginning to give the word 'home' a real definition.

Jinsei was a hard teacher, and he didn't beat around the bush. "The limit is just a pretty word for the place you gave up," he scoffed. "It's a mental thing, one that any decent shinobi can and should do without. There are no limits! You are unlimited!" He pushed Pein without mercy, sticking to his philosophy of mixed encouragement and insanity. At first, Pein learned nothing but endurance, which frustrated him but seemed to satisfy Jinsei.

Then, gradually, everything else came. Pein lived for those moments when the target would centre itself in his mind, when he would let the kunai fly knowing that it would be a bull's-eye before it hit. Nothing thrilled him so much as the rush of exhaustion that set upon him after mastering a difficult technique. Dodge, block, throw, kick, twist, grab - during that year, life was a dance, full of intricate routines, careful choreography and improvisation. Every move had its place in the rhythm of battle. Pein's racing pulse set the beat, his flowing, adrenaline-charged blood provided the melody. The song went on and on, and Pein rarely hit wrong notes.

Jinsei had his introspective spells, when he would often compare Pein to himself. "You have the 'fight high'," he told Pein, grinning. "I can see it. You become the fight, you become the high. I always had that, too." Then he would sober and point out differences. "You're odd, though. You temper the high with reason. Your wildness is always controlled, always strategic. I can't believe you never lose it - you're so careful, and at the same time risk-taking. Your style is sure to stump your enemies, at any rate."

It was late at night that Pein learned the most about his mentor. When the two of them sat lazing in the cramped living room, looking at the stars through the window, asking themselves unanswerable questions about the universe, Jinsei would become strangely talkative.

At one such instance, he held out his right hand to Pein, indicating a ring on his middle finger. It had an odd kanji design on it, but Jinsei covered it with his thumb before Pein could decipher it. Pein didn't ask to see it again; he had a feeling that he had already been granted a rare privilege by glancing at it. He did, however, wonder why he hadn't noticed it before.

"Normally I keep it hidden under a simple genjutsu," Jinsei answered the unspoken question. "I guess I'm ashamed to wear it, because of what it means now in comparison to what it meant then. But it's the one material thing I could never part with." Pein kept his eyes on Jinsei, making sure that he knew he had an audience just in case he decided the matter was too private. Pein didn't want to hear a forbidden confession, but he was intrigued - this was the closest thing to sentimentality Jinsei had ever displayed.

"She gave it to me," Jinsei said, rubbing the ring's surface in a gesture so natural that Pein knew it must be a habit. "She smiled at me one day, when I was a couple years older than you. She took my hand, and slipped it onto my finger." He stopped, trying to immerse himself in a long-lost memory that seemed more like a dream now.

"She?" Pein repeated softly, respectful but curious. He thought of the only _she _who had ever really been a part of his life. "Your lover?" In truth, Pein had a very vague idea of what a lover was, but he had heard them spoken of, and from the various contexts he remembered, giving rings seemed like the type of thing they'd do.

"Naw," Jinsei chuckled, without the harsh undertones for once. "I wouldn't presume to think she had such an intimate connection to someone like me. She was just a girl that I saw around sometimes, and after a while I stopped seeing her at all."

"Are you lying?" Pein asked. Phrased that way, the question sounded rude and accusatory, but Pein could hear the whispers of lies weaving throughout the verses of truth in Jinsei's words.

Jinsei grinned. Perplexingly, he never seemed more pleased than when Pein caught him in a sinful act. "No more than I lie to myself," he replied cryptically. "Besides, if you think I'm an honest man, you're deluding yourself."

But Pein _did _think Jinsei was an honest man. An honest man was not someone who constantly told the truth and nothing but the truth. An honest man was a person that you could trust to be truthful when it was important, and to have good reasons for lying and holding back. That was how Pein trusted Jinsei, and he felt that Jinsei was testing him with that last jibe.

Whatever test there was, he must have passed, because Jinsei continued. "She told me there were nine other rings like the one she'd given me - well, not identical, you know, but similar. She thought that one day they'd all come together somehow. 'Use it,' she said, 'or pass it on.' Something she stressed was that I shouldn't let it shape my choices, just help them along once I'd made them. I thought she was exaggerating - it was just a ring, what kinds of powers could it have? But this little piece of tin has impacted my life a whole lot, I can tell you. Every day it has a new meaning, one that I can't ignore.

"This kanji stands for zero, or nothing. I've spent my whole life trying to figure out what that 'nothing' means, but it's so elusive. The closest I've ever gotten is deciding that maybe it has something to do with me personally. I'm a nobody, a nothing in a world where only somethings count."

Noticing the prudence with which Pein observed him, as if debating whether to show comfort, pity or indifference, Jinsei reassured his younger companion with a quick laugh. "Don't worry, kid. I blew my chance to be a somebody a long time ago, and I can't say I regretted it. When you're a somebody, things actually _matter._"

Pein looked away at back at the night sky. He tore his gaze from the brightest star and examined the small yellowish pinpricks that filled the blackness around it. They weren't particularly magnificent to look at, but without them the universe would be so empty.

He adjusted his position on the carpet, leaning back so that his auburn spikes grazed Jinsei's armchair. He bent his neck backwards until he could see his friend and teacher. _You're somebody to me, _he wanted to say. But he had a feeling that Jinsei already knew it.

* * *

On his fourteenth birthday, Pein critically examined himself, sifting through the darkest corners of both his physical and emotional sides. It was vital to do so - he intended to know just who he was. And it seemed to him that he had grown considerably. Even his face looked altered, as if it had tailored itself to match the piercings that covered it. All in all, he approved of the change. He was no one's experiment now but his own. 

This didn't stop him from being eternally humiliated when Jinsei caught him looking in the mirror like some shallow, vain teenager. "Checking yourself out, are you?" Jinsei needled him, grinning impishly.

"No," Pein said, his expression of concentration shutting down to blandness.

"Aw, don't be self-conscious," Jinsei soothed him. "Heck, you're hot!"

Pein sighed inwardly and was glad that he didn't blush easily. Random, slightly disturbing comments like that were routine for the enigmatic Jinsei, especially early in the morning.

"Seriously, I think it's about time you got a girlfriend." Jinsei really didn't know when to let it go.

Pein tensed immediately. He hated unstable topics like girls. They reminded him of the weakness he couldn't get rid of - _her. _"I don't," he said, his tone clipped.

Jinsei took it upon himself to guess the cause of Pein's shortness, and was sort of-almost accurate. "So why'd she reject you?" he asked, skipping the preliminary discussions.

"I wasn't rejected. I never made an offer." Pein suddenly wondered why he was upholding a conversation he didn't want to have, and made his way toward the door. Jinsei stopped him, lifting his hands in placation.

"Sorry, sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to pry. Well, okay, I did, but I promise not to cross the line any further. She must have been one hell of a girl, though."

Pein nodded curtly, not in his most forgiving mood. He spent enough time agonizing over what might have been without Jinsei shoving him into more doubts and missed opportunities.

Jinsei watched his young accomplice through frustrated eyes. He had been working on Pein's skills for over a year and a half, but he wouldn't say that Pein was the fruit of his labours. Pein had ripened on his own, with a bit of watering from Jinsei. But he was such an impenetrable kid! He was pretty sure that Pein had lied about his age when they'd first met, but he admittedly kept the façade believable, simply because he was so mature. Everything about him was controlled, suppressed and filed away in an adult manner. It was only during these occasional moments when Pein showed adolescent sensitivity that Jinsei felt as if he were dealing with a teen. It was going to take some careful handling to get Pein out of this bout of memory-induced angst.

* * *

A few hours later, Pein still didn't know where their destination was. Jinsei had led him out of town and into the forest, but would only drop aggravating hints when questioned, being very breezy about the whole venture. 

Pein hated surprises.

Which was part of the reason he received an unpleasant shock when suddenly a kunai whizzed out of nowhere, narrowly missing his neck, and they found themselves surrounded by three tall, agile-looking men. The rest of the reason was redundant - they _were _being ambushed, after all.

Jinsei seized up their opponents. They seemed strong, and they were definitely fast. If Pein could handle one, he could probably take out the other two. "Pein," he whispered, "you take that guy nearest to you. Watch his moves."

Pein moved a bit to show his understanding. He launched himself at the prearranged bandit, feinting to the side at the last minute and trying a quick kunai thrust. The enemy dodged the blow and came back at him. After a few more manoeuvres, Pein concluded that the man had speed and decent aim, but not a very large repertoire of techniques.

He paused long enough to blow a series of small fireballs in the bandit's direction, but realized that it had been a mistake - the fire obstructed his vision, and next thing he knew the man was aiming at him from above. He dove aside just in time to avoid being impaled, losing his balance with the sudden movement. He landed in the dirt and swung his upper body around, not pausing to check whether his opponent was still there before forming a hand seal and firing a storm of rock pellets at him. A strangled cry and an oath told him his haphazard jutsu had found its mark, and he jumped up, hurling a kunai in the same direction. He didn't hear it sink into human flesh like he had always imagined he would, but when the dust had cleared, one glance at the motionless body was enough to tell him what he needed to know.

Pushing away thoughts of his first intentional kill, Pein looked for Jinsei, who had vanished to fight his own double battle. It was Jinsei who found him, however, approaching stealthily from behind. Pein sensed his familiar Chakra signature and turned, dismissing his relief. Things just seemed much more secure with Jinsei around.

Jinsei's gaze darted from Pein to the body of the bandit, and he struggled to decide whether "good job" was an appropriate expression to use. Finally he settled on, "I brought one of them down easily, but the other snuck off. He's lurking around somewhere - we shouldn't have any trouble finishing him."

Pein concentrated, trying to sense the rogue nin's Chakra and pinpoint his location. But the man was masking his energy fairly well, making the faint tinge of foreign force impossible to properly define. Pein dug into his sensual capacity, trying to focus harder and get a stronger Chakra signature, which turned out to be another mistake far more costly than the first.

He didn't realize what had happened immediately. All he felt was Jinsei shouldering him slightly as he stepped abruptly to the left, then heard a breathless grunt from the older man. Jinsei stumbled, then dropped to the ground. Pein, surprised and clueless, stared at the prostrate body next to him. His gaze was irresistibly drawn to the kunai sticking out of the chest, and the thick red fluid staining the blade and the shirt it was plunged into. Then he knew what had happened, and he foresaw all the results in one nanosecond of anguish.

The Chakra signature he had been looking for surged up suddenly, and he whirled to find the last bandit standing behind him with a sneer on his face. "So, just me and you now, right, brat?" he said. Pein hated the sound of his voice, and wished he had never heard, seen or fought him.

"Not for long," Pein retorted, feeling the power inside him. _Not for long. _

He stepped back and his foot squished into wet grass. Wet, red grass. And suddenly, as if the blood on the ground had soaked into his foot and travelled up his body, he felt it rising in him. The red was filling his lungs, and every breath was sharp and intense, shocking in the sheer amount of oxygen it pulled in. But it couldn't be oxygen - it was too strong, too invigorating. It solidified in Pein's veins, freezing him with ice, then melted and evaporated into a fiery vapour that tore his muscles apart and sewed them back together over and over. He raised his eyes to meet the bandit's. _Hotcoldslowfastspinstilldarklightlifedeath. _He was feeling everything at once, and the variety made him powerful. But everything could be condensed into one broad spectrum: HATRED. Hatred in bold, bright red capitals, a message communicated through Pein's torturous gaze.

When the man fell, twitching, unable to make a sound as his throat was clogged with the pain he was drowning in, Pein threw his last kunai. He threw it so hard that he wasn't even mildly astonished when it went right through the bandit's heart and two trees behind him.

Then he turned back towards Jinsei, who lay on the grass, blood still gushing from the fatal wound. Pein knew it was fatal; it was written all over Jinsei's face, and there was just too much blood. He dropped into a cross-legged position by his mentor's head.

"You didn't have to. I wouldn't have minded dying." It wasn't what Pein had originally intended to say, but he knew it was true. He would have accepted death, just as he accepted everything else life had kicked into his face.

Jinsei cracked a smile, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet but not as weak as Pein had expected it to be. "I know," he said.

"I have a right to die." Pein didn't know why he was pressing this point, but it was important that Jinsei understand him in these last moments.

"So do I. And I have a right to die for whoever I want," Jinsei told him, his voice a bit more raspy than it had been earlier. "Sorry."

_He's apologizing for saving my life, _Pein thought. "You're forgiven." _But I'm not._

Jinsei smiled wider, and Pein noticed a slight, feeble movement of the fingers on his right hand. "Guess I'll be...passing it on then..." Pein knew what he was talking about, but all he could do was watch the life leave his friend, starting with his body and ending with his eyes, the last spark extinguished in those hazel depths.

Pein sat there for a long time, but he didn't look at the body. Instead he observed the greenness of the trees, the blueness of the sky, the brownness of the dirt, the wisps of white that were the clouds. They reminded him more of the Jinsei he knew than the corpse in front of him did. He wondered where Jinsei had meant to take him. Wherever it was, he found that he didn't particularly want to go there.

He wished now that he had said more, when there were still ears willing to listen. He wished that he had asked more, when there had still been a voice to answer. But he knew that unsaid didn't mean unheard, and that was his greatest comfort.

Finally, when his reminiscences threatened to engulf him completely, he returned his gaze to Jinsei's right hand. The skin was blood-streaked, but the so highly prized ring was clean and unscathed. Pein slid it gently off and gripped it in his fist for a moment, but whatever warmth it had retained was gone now. He put it on his middle finger, as Jinsei had worn it, but Jinsei's fingers were thicker and more calloused than his own, and it was much too loose. Indeed, the only place it would possibly stay on was his right thumb, so that was where he left it. _Zero. Nothing. Nothing left except this nothing._

Pein stood, rubbing the ring as he had seen Jinsei do. He hoped it would help him somehow, because he was never coming back. But that didn't mean there wouldn't be a next time, a chance to promise himself something. Next time, though...

Next time, no one would take the kunai for him.

* * *

A/N: Well, this chapter was something of an experiment. I've never actually done character death before - _good guy _character death, anyway. Hope I didn't mess it up or make it overly dramatic. This made me sad; I was starting to like Jinsei and enjoy writing him. But hey, as long as we still have Pein and Konan, I'm good. Kishimoto-san, be merciful to them, please! 

This story has now gone incredibly AU, which makes it seem a bit pointless, but whatever. It's just a hobby, something I do for pleasure and reviews (actually, they're the same thing). I want to be angry with Masashi Kishimoto for ruining part of my fun, but he invented all these characters I love so much, so I can't.

Anyway, I extend the usual plea for reviews and feedback, positive and negative. Does anyone have any tips for writing action scenes? Action is my major, and I mean _major_, weakness in Naruto fanfiction. If you have advice, or just random comments to make, review! Please and thank you:)


	7. Chapter 7: Consequences

I hope you guys don't think I'm overloading Pein and Konan with miseries...they would have to have very problematic lives, you'd think, though, to end up where they are now in the manga. Speaking of the manga, looks like Jiraiya's in trouble. Hopefully he'll pull out of it without causing too much harm or dishonour to our favourite auburn-haired, face-pierced shinobi.

Anyway, returning to the current situation, which is Chapter 7 of _Pretense. _It's Konan's turn once again. Is anyone getting confused with the timeline? I know it must be hard to follow where one of the characters is while I'm describing the other's adventures. To clarify things a little, last chapter Pein was fourteen, and this chapter Konan is fifteen and a half. Pein will catch up next chapter.

Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 7 - Consequences

Blue observed her fingers carefully as they folded the paper in her hands, crease after crease, caressing the white parchment. As a small origami butterfly took shape, she felt more like an outside spectator than its creator. When she'd finished, she let the paper model rest in her palm, channelling Chakra into it so that it fluttered around her room. She released her concentration and watched it spiral to the floor, feeling a rush of disappointment as the illusion of life and flight was destroyed.

Since a Jounin examiner had advised her to "pursue some new interests to enrich her career", that was exactly what Blue had been doing. Well, really, it hadn't been an examiner so much as a psychiatrist of sorts. It was a requirement that all Rain shinobi who reached Jounin level had to be psychologically assessed to be declared fit for missions. It had been an odd half-hour for Blue, especially with a particularly blunt Jounin as her counsellor. She smiled slightly as she thought back to that encounter, barely more than two weeks ago. It had been strange, but enlightening too.

* * *

_"So, do you think you're sane?" the Jounin asked immediately after greeting her. Though taken aback, she nevertheless responded coolly._

_"Yes; as sane as it is possible for a kunoichi to be."_

_"So you're saying that kunoichi are less sane than common people?" the Jounin leaned forward, frowning intensely. Blue countered by leaning in as well, eyeballing him challengingly. As expected, the man drew back, thrown off by her display of belligerent confidence._

_"Not just kunoichi - shinobi in general. I think that shinobi are brought up with a different sense of 'sane' than civilians," she affirmed._

_"Care to elaborate?" _

_She raised her eyebrows. "Not really - I think I've provided the necessary clarification. Pushy, aren't you?"_

_"I'm a psychiatrist. I'm supposed to push," he defended._

_"Mind if I resist?"_

_His brow furrowed as he tried to puzzle out the motives behind her less-than-polite behaviour. "You're being difficult. Why?"_

_"That's who I am. Life isn't easy, and neither am I. If you want me to be honest, that's fine. But you won't back me into any corners."_

_He changed tack, switching to a more conventional topic. "What is your ultimate goal as a kunoichi of Rain?" _

_Blue paused. "To make things right," she said finally._

_"What things?"_

_"Things that are wrong." She enjoyed the emotions that played across his face, most of them varying levels of frustration and exasperation._

_"You seem to have thought about this a great deal, yet you're not coming up with any very detailed explanations," the Jounin observed._

_"Am I not cooperating? Or am I just not conforming to your preconceived judgment of me? And if so, would anything I tell you, however in-depth, make any difference?" Blue knew she was being purposely disobliging, but she also believed her own words._

_The shrink folded his hands and seemed to give up. "I see," he said, then gave her his bit of advice. "I think you should pursue some new interests to enrich your career. At the moment, you are very strongly focused on your ninja life, which is important of course, but it's never good to overbalance."_

_"Thank you," she told him, standing as he handed her his evaluation of her sanity, which she was to give to her superiors. As she left the office, she couldn't resist peeking in the folder to see the psychiatrist's brief synopsis of their little interview. _

_'Konan has a very cynical view on life, while at the same time displaying strangely idealistic qualities. She is secure in herself, and knows her own capabilities. However, her firm, frank attitude can be interpreted as disrespect, and she is lucky that her tough charm offsets her coarseness. She is a certifiably sane kunoichi who will be a credit to whatever causes she decides to uphold.'_

* * *

Now, in her room, Blue felt the same flicker of irritation that she had the first time she'd read those words. Who had told him her name was "Konan"? Whoever it was, they should have asked her permission before divulging _her _personal information. Besides that, there was the whole matter of his comments. 'Cynical' and 'idealistic'? Not two words you normally saw in such close proximity. She was secure in her current position, true, but that didn't mean she was happy with it. Tough charm? Was that supposed to be a compliment? And she had never thought that she might appear coarse. 

Basically, the point she was wrestling with came down to this: was she really that screwed up? If so, being certifiably sane was small comfort.

Then again, the psychological examiner had raised a valid point. She had pursued a new interest - the art of paper folding, origami. It helped, too; when she needed calming, reassurance or simply a capacity for clear thought, she reached no further than a sheet of paper, and her fingers and mind worked in seamless collaboration.

She had recently found that her paper creations had other uses as well. With the proper Chakra control, she could give her origami models movement. She was working on developing more techniques in connection with this new ability, specifically a way to use her "origami powers" without actually needing to fold and prepare the paper beforehand. She had to immerse herself in the magic of the art. But the complications of life and politics were making that next to impossible.

_Amegakure is drowning in its own rain, _Blue thought, smiling grimly at the fitting metaphor. The sudden incapacitation and death of the late Amekage had thrown everyone for a loop, and order had never really been restored. Hanzo, the new leader, didn't improve things.

Hanzo was a riddle in himself, and that was the problem. His rise to power had been entirely unexpected, and people were still trying to figure out how it had happened. He had been a ANBU captain, good at his job but otherwise unexceptional. Somehow, however, he had surged up the ranks and elbowed his way into a leadership role, which was easier than it sounded due to the complete disorganization of the village.

Blue supposed he had all the necessary qualities of a leader. He was a strong man who spoke out and stood up, he was intelligent and strategic, and he was skilled in forging connections with people, specifically those in high places. He already had the Elders' Council wrapped around his little finger. But she didn't, couldn't, like him.

He was _too _ambitious. He wanted to get Rain out of its rut a bit too badly, in her opinion, and he was making sacrifices to achieve that goal. He was pressing the village and its shinobi as if they were at their peak and not at an all-time low, and he was stretching their resources too thin in an effort to appear distinguished in other countries' eyes. At the moment, there couldn't be more than five Jounin in town, including Blue, because the rest were on outside missions. She didn't think that was prudent, and the ninja were paying for it. Three shinobi, one of them Blue's friend, had been reported killed in action. Rain couldn't afford losses like that, but Hanzo was relentless. Her fist clenched, crumpling the new sheet of paper she clutched. They were going to regress even further because of Hanzo.

Her reflection was interrupted by her mother's voice, calling from downstairs. "Blue! Someone's here for you!"

Blue stood reluctantly, trying to smooth out the paper she'd balled up in her burst of anger. But even after she'd rubbed her whole arm across it, she could still see very obvious creases on the page, and the corners curled upwards. It just proved that no one could smooth over every bump and erase every unwanted line. Sometimes, you just had to make do with the rumples.

When she came to the door, she was somewhat surprised to find Fusao waiting there. He was a Jounin now too, but they hadn't had much close contact since their break-up. "Hey," she offered pleasantly.

"Hi, Blue. We've been summoned to the Ameka - I mean, Hanzo-sama's office. A mission briefing, it seems," Fusao said, shifting from foot to foot and gauging her reaction anxiously.

Blue stepped out to walk beside the young shinobi, frowning at his blunder, which she firmly told herself _wasn't _a Freudian slip. They wouldn't make Hanzo Amekage. _Would_ they? "What! He can't seriously be sending out more ninja? The village's got no protection!"

Fusao shrugged helplessly. "He's in charge. What can we do?"

_Not let him push us around, first of all, _Blue thought. She was still seething when they entered the office, but if Hanzo noticed her bad humour, he didn't comment. Blue, being biased, thought him extremely ugly at that moment, but he really wasn't bad-looking, with broad, muscled shoulders and thick brown hair kept well out of his intent black eyes.

"Blue-san, Fusao-san," he greeted them suavely. "I'm sending you out on a mission that your comrade Himeko-san, may she rest in peace, failed earlier."

Blue tensed. Himeko had been one of her dear companions.

"The objective of the mission is to investigate the Northern Pit, and bring back a sample of the rock that covers its bottom. Specialists think that the fumes that emanate from the pit are an indication of valuable minerals located in the area." Hanzo showed them the location of the deep, famous canyon on the map. But Blue, who had paid attention in geography class, already knew its placement, and some other things besides.

"Hanzo-sama," she said, forcing herself to stay courteous, "those fumes contain some of the most toxic chemicals in the world. There is no way anyone could go into the Northern Pit and emerge alive, without protective gear not invented as of yet."

Hanzo didn't look too concerned. "Ah yes, I imagine that's where Himeko-san encountered difficulties. But I have faith in your resourcefulness."

"But Hanzo-sama, Blue's right," Fusao spoke up reasonably. "This is a suicide mission."

Suddenly, Blue had a horrible glimpse of what she very much hoped wasn't the truth. She couldn't hold it inside.

"Hanzo-sama...you know no one can survive, don't you? You know we're going to die. That's what you want..."

"Blue, what are you -" Fusao started, confused disbelief etched on his face.

"You've been eliminating our shinobi. More specifically, the shinobi who have spoken against your methods of leadership. Himeko had visited the Elders with a complaint just a few days before she got the mission, and the other two had argued against you as well." The condemning words were tumbling out of Blue's mouth, and each syllable disgusted her more. She tried to stay calm, but her lips couldn't move fast enough to get everything out, and her heart and lungs were doubly hard to keep the terrible things she was saying from constricting her air passages.

"Stop this foolishness, Blue-san," Hanzo said, his voice sharp. "These are serious accusations that will result in serious consequences for you."

_Consequences? Like the consequences Himeko faced for speaking the truth? _Blue thought, fury rampaging through her body like a stampede of bulls and trampling her own sense of self-preservation.

"You corrupt, self-absorbed bastard! How dare you murder loyal citizens of Rain? If you think I'm going to carry out some stupid mission for your twisted motives, you can go shove those 'consequences' up your butt!"

She had crossed the line. Hanzo now meant business and Fusao was open-mouthed, not knowing what to believe, who to look to. "I'm working in the best interests of Rain, Blue," Hanzo said, losing some of his calm, collected complacency. "We will never be powerful if there are people who contest the rules. And if you refuse this mission, you will be one of those misguided fools."

"So you're admitting that you killed my friends?" Blue was on full righteous outrage mode, and her wrath was unstoppable. "Why don't you just pull out one of your shiny kunai and gut me, right here, right now? It would accomplish your purpose much more effectively."

"On the contrary, it would be a waste of a kunai. So I take it you're refusing the mission?" Hanzo's eyes asked her, gloatingly, if she really knew what she was in for. She did.

"That's right," she snarled. "You won't get away with this, Hanzo-_sama._" The two adversaries stared at each other, expressions equally ruthless. Blue breathed raggedly, Hanzo inhaled in a relaxed manner. She stabbed him with her gaze, he mocked her with his. She accused, he didn't even stoop to defend. They both knew who the prosecutor would end up being.

Hanzo turned to Fusao and asked coolly, "Will you take the mission, Fusao-san?"

"Don't," Blue said immediately, eyes flashing. "You're going to die. He admitted to everything, Fusao! You can't obey him after this!"

Fusao hesitated, caught in the despair of indecision. The concept that Hanzo would do something like this was mind-boggling. If he accepted it and defied the leader, it would mean relinquishing his entire lifestyle.

Blue saw the slump in his shoulders and the resigned bite of his lip before he said anything, and she recognized his defeat. She pressed her lips together, nostrils flaring. Suddenly, in a violently spontaneous gesture, she flung a kunai, its point sinking deep into Hanzo's desk. The thunk of metal on wood resounded through the entire building, it seemed, and she turned and stalked out of the office.

She listened to the noisy clatter of her own footsteps, and wished her shoes were muddy just so that she could track dirt onto these nauseating white floors. She pictured Hanzo's condescending half-smile in her mind, and swallowed the bile that burned her throat.

* * *

It took Blue only about forty-five minutes to tell everyone she knew what she'd discovered about Hanzo. Rain was a small town, for sure. How had it landed itself in the hands of such a maniac? 

She pulled the elastic out of her hair, undoing her ponytail. She ran her fingers through her glossy indigo locks, sagging against a tree, the repercussions of her actions catching up to her. They felt like a weight on her shoulders, dragging her down. She sighed - nothing was working out anymore. If her future still held any promise at all, it wasn't here in Rain.

She had somehow thought that the villagers would rally around her once she told them the news, or something. But most of them didn't even believe her, and the few who did didn't seem inclined to act on their misgivings. Maybe some of them _agreed _with Hanzo's methods. She knew that not everyone liked shinobi, and some would appreciate their elimination. It had never really affected her personally, but now she saw her own powerlessness when pitted against the majority. She was a strong kunoichi, one of the best, but she was fifteen and a half, a woman and in trouble with the law. And most of all, she was just _one. _

What could she do? Without support, she couldn't hope to escape severe punishment. Execution, perhaps. Banishment at the very least, with Hanzo in the front seat dictating her sentence. Basically, if she stayed here, her life was forfeit. The only option was, well, to _not _stay here. That meant leaving - leaving before Hanzo sent his men after her.

She wavered, debating whether or not to stop in and see her parents. She finally decided it would be a pointless venture. Hanzo would be spreading all kinds of stories about her treachery and disloyalty. Why say good-bye today when tomorrow, they would hate her?

She set off for the exit gate at a brisk pace, not slowing down or speeding up when she reached the boundary. "Mission," she spat at the guard, pushing past him. She didn't care if it was a feeble excuse - if he tried to hold her back, she'd put her Jounin abilities to the test on him. However, he didn't stop her. There were definite advantages to being gifted, pretty and well-liked - and intimidating, on occasion.

She wondered, as she struck out on a path so unfamiliar it daunted even her intrepid spirit, if this was how Pein had felt. This Do-or-Die mix of the euphoria of defiance and the ache of regret - it was absolutely unique. She imagined what it must have been like at twelve years old, starting out on his own. She now understood exactly why he'd pressed that kunai to her throat, and was certain that he would have killed her, if that's what it took to move on. She respected him for knowing at twelve what she now knew at fifteen - that the beginning is also the end.

In a way, this was all his fault. He had planted the seed of doubt in her, and it had grown and blossomed until the winter came and stripped all of its bark, leaving only the barest and bleakest of truths behind. She had in turn planted it in the hearts of the villagers, and hoped that it wouldn't be nipped in the bud by Hanzo. Thinking of Hanzo again, she couldn't say if Pein had ruined her life or been the cause of her salvation.

Blue found it strange that she felt no panic, but she did usually keep a clear head. With the exception of what had just happened, of course, but she thought her loss of control was completely justified in light of the circumstances. If only she had aimed her kunai at his face...if only he wasn't too smart not to expect that, too skilled not to block it...

She remembered Pein's inability to tell her where 'home' was, eight years ago. He had been unable to find it, and she realized clearly why.

Now, she was joining him in the search.

* * *

A/N: A blot on Blue's near-perfect life, and a pretty big one too. She expected it all along, though. It takes a lot to catch our Konan off guard, and I'm proud of that! 

Please be patient with me. I know you must be itching to have the two of them together by now, and I promise that there will be only one more chapter detailing their separation. Then we'll get into some PeinxKonan action! Keep in mind that I am just as eager for it as you are!

Thanks for your constant support, if I could I would buy you all a present. As it is, I can only say it over and over, in bold capital italics: **_THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!_**

You all know what's next. Give me a six-letter word for "evaluation", starting with R...


	8. Chapter 8: Stop

Chapter 8 has arrived. I don't _think _it's late, is it? But if it is, I have a sort-of excuse, for once - it's one of my longest chapters yet. Possibly my weirdest yet, too, but that's subjective.

Anyone else read Chapter 374 of the manga? It devastated me. It made Pein sound so...so..._delusional _or something! Now I'll have to retreat into a corner for a couple of hours and twist everything he said and did until it fits my view on him. Yes, I'm in denial. No, I will not accept reality. I want _my _Pein to be reality. It's just not fair:(

Anyway ((clears throat)). You can just ignore that little rant, or scold me for being so bratty. Whichever you choose. But please, read and review. :)

* * *

Chapter 8 - Stop

Pein knew exactly what he needed. He needed to stop.

Just stop, whether it was for five seconds or for a lifetime. He needed to stop his body that urged him to _move, _to stop his mind that told him to _think, _to stop his senses that wanted to _seetouchsmellheartaste _all at once. He was saturated, and he couldn't take any more of anything. He was already leaking, losing things he wanted to hold onto, and he couldn't stop it. He was just so full of holes.

He was vaguely amazed that none of the people he passed on the street were screaming and pointing, hysterically calling for healers and ANBU. Apparently his skin wasn't really evaporating, and chunks of him weren't really falling off. But why did it feel like it, then? He just wanted to keep going, and he knew that he was physically capable of continuing. What he didn't know was if his mental side could keep up this frantic pace much longer. He was at his limit in so many ways.

He remembered Jinsei telling him something about limits. But what did he know? He was dead. Dead as in gone. Dead as in _nothing _and _nobody _and _never again. _Why was everything so final?

Pein wasn't hungry, wasn't thirsty. He hadn't felt much of anything for a while now. He hadn't felt much of anything ever. He had never known nothing itself could be so painful. And all of these commoners dashing by him, haggling over prices, arguing over news, laughing over life, didn't know either. Maybe that was why they couldn't see, why they weren't terrified of him. Yet.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted an elderly lady, waddling painstakingly down the road. She was weighed down by bags of groceries, and a carton of milk was on the brink of falling out of one of the sacks and spattering all over the ground. He could hear the woman's gasping effort even from several metres away, and saw the milk slip. Before he knew it he was suddenly at her side, his thin fingers grasping the precarious carton, saving it from a white, wet oblivion on the pavement.

"Let me help you," he said. It wasn't an offer, a volunteering of aid; it was a plea. _Let me take control of something. Let me be a part of normalcy. Oh God, let me help myself! _But all the round, grey-haired old lady saw was a gentlemanlike young man, generously giving of his time and strength, and he found himself thankful for that. He took her bags, handling them with polite care; they were incredibly light compared to the burden he was carrying everywhere.

She smiled up at him, being hunched over. The furrows that wreathed her weather-beaten skin melded together so that her benevolent face became one huge wrinkle. But still, it was sort of pretty, because her pleasure was genuine. "How kind of you," she said, and he had to slow down to stay with her hobbling gait and incline his head to hear her scratchy, textured voice. "Nice young men are so rare these days. Oh well, of course most of them are nice, but not so voluntarily helpful."

Pein considered telling her the truth, that he was not a "nice young man" in any sense. But he saw something in her eyes that he didn't want to hurt, a belief that he didn't want to destroy. A belief that he wanted to believe, too. So he shut up.

He found solace in his silence, placed next to the woman's amiable chatter. She told him of her pretty, grown-up daughter, who always took the time to come visit her every week despite the fact that it was a three hours' walk from her home. She told him of the stray cat who waited on her doorstep to be fed (_so that's what the milk was for), _and of the small children who waved enthusiastically at her through the window as they passed by on their way to school. She told him of her late husband and the long list of affectionate nicknames he had for her, and of her teenage nephew, who cheated shamelessly at cards only to let her win in the end anyway.

There were things she didn't tell him. She didn't tell him about her innate joy in living, or about the love she felt for all these people she spoke of. She didn't tell him about the sunlight that reflected off the roofs of the surrounding houses, or about the background sound of laughter echoing in the alley. These were all things she neglected to mention; but Pein saw and heard them anyway, and he drank them in. These were the ever-present things that spelled LIFE in bold capitals, and they bounced off Pein and then returned again. But it wasn't as if they were assaulting him, or violating him, as had happened so often before. They were just _there, _and that was all he needed to know.

It was only about fifteen minutes to the elderly lady's home, but Pein had plenty of time to experience an epiphany. That fifteen minutes, she talked, and he listened with no desire for the conversation to end. It was wholly one-sided, and he liked it that way. But oh, the things he heard! They were so commonplace, yet for him each and every one was new. And when they arrived at their destination, he was sorry.

"Thank you very much," she beamed at him as she took her bags back in the doorway. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to come in and have something to eat?"

"I'm sure, thank you." Pein doubted she would ever know what she had done for him simply by letting him help her out for a tiny portion of her day. Those were the greatest deeds; the ones that affected just a single person in a big way, the ones that you never found out about.

Her wise, kind eyes twinkling at him, she said, "At least let me give you this, then." She reached for him. When her age-spotted papery skin touched his, Pein instinctively flinched, but her bony fingers were gentle as she flipped his palm over and dropped a coin into his hand. She withdrew, and he enclosed the money inside a fist. He let his arm stay in the air for a moment, waiting for her to stretch out again so he could return the coin. But she never did, and he realized with astonishing slowness that she meant for him to keep it. He opened his mouth to say something, but she had already shut the door.

He turned around and walked on, staring at the piece of copper in total confusion. Was money something to use or to pass on, like Jinsei's ring? But how did you know who to pass it on to? How did other people know these things? How many miles really separated him from civilization?

* * *

Pein didn't know quite how or why, which grated on his nerves, but after that incident, he found that many of the kinks in his system had been worked out. The length of the healing process surprised him. It was over half a year since the event he forced himself to think about despite his heart's denial, and only now was he regaining full functionality. Although it was fair to say that he had suffered much these recent seasons - hunger, thirst, regret, longing and loss, all gnawing at both his mind and body. Those were the hands of his life's clock, chasing him in circles. But Time, no matter how much it ridiculed him, could not prevent him from growing up. 

Pein's life began to take an entirely new shape one night in that uncomfortable period between autumn and winter when you were still wondering where the warmth had gone. The chill didn't unduly disturb him, however. A thick cloak with the collar turned up was not quite sufficient to protect him from the cold, but he had never really minded the elements. He admired them, in fact - their ability to effortlessly buffet living beings around, their absolute power. They could be defended from, but never fought, and certainly never beaten.

That evening, he was seeking shelter and time off from the streets, and he chose a small, low-profile pub as his place of rest. It was a dingy place where the air was too smoky, the light too yellow and the customers too rowdy. None of them seemed to care, however, the majority of them so intoxicated they were approaching either total apathy or all-out hysteria. Pein had some trouble deciding whether to try his chances with the most drunk or the most sober - both had their risks. He compromised by settling on someone who looked neither inebriated nor otherwise - it could have been debated whether the individual was even human.

As he came closer, he thought that the fitting category for this client would be something like "mutant freak" or "alien". He had never before seen a person, using the word loosely, with a plant-like growth encasing their face, uncannily resembling a lethal green jaw, and a head divided into two halves, one black and one white. The man sat perfectly still, gripping an empty mug, and Pein had almost rethought his choice of companion when the plant-man suddenly swivelled around and fixed him with a blank, unblinking stare.

Pein slowed his involuntarily augmented heart rate by force of will and took a seat by the stranger.

"...Evening," he said, tossing the words on his tongue for a moment before letting them go. They felt very unnatural, as he was not a greeting sort of person. He recalled that the more commonly used version was '_Good _evening'. But, really, what was another meaningless adjective in the grand scheme of things?

His companion didn't seem to care, returning to his non-existent drink without the faintest of acknowledgments. Pein watched him intensely, trying to mentally dissect him, or at least force some kind of response. But his efforts went unrewarded, if not uninterrupted.

Pein swung his shoulder slightly to the side just in time to avoid having it grabbed by a heavy-set blond man with thick, calloused fingers. Reluctantly he turned away from the interesting part-vegetable stranger to face this new addition to the party. This man was anything but impassive; he wore a cocky, threatening sneer, and he was backed by four equally aggressive-looking males.

"Who're you?" he asked. His voice was rough, but he obviously liked the sound of it. Pein didn't particularly.

"Pein." This, at least, would be simple enough for this hunk of humanity to comprehend. Probably.

"Well, _Pein, _you're in my seat," the man said, his upper lip rising until it practically touched his nostril.

"Really," Pein said noncommittally.

"Yeah, so _move._"

Pein considered his next reply. He didn't want to cause trouble here, but he had now become intrigued by the one-third black, one-third white and one-third plant man he was sitting beside, and the thought of shifting without making some discoveries irked him. So he said calmly, "I don't think that's necessary."

"Oh, yeah? Why not?" the blond man took a threatening step forward, his taut chest muscles rippling with the motion. One of his henchmen called, "Let's take him, Hitoro!"

"Because free seats can be easily found over there," Pein explained in a bored monotone, indicating the other side of the bar. The blond man, who obviously thought he was being mocked, snarled. "I don't think you heard me right, brat. I said you're in _my _seat. _My _seat is here, not over there."

Things became a tad more serious as the man, presumably named Hitoro, drew a knife from his belt and brandished it at the level of Pein's chin. _It's not a kunai, so he's probably not a ninja, _Pein thought. _And he didn't draw it as fast as Jinsei could. _This was a fight he could win with ease. Until two of Hitoro's minions grabbed him from behind, restraining his arms.

Pein tensed, then forced himself to relax. Since leaving Rain, he had had an aversion to being touched in any way. Even when Jinsei had clasped him on the shoulder with purely good intentions, he had disliked the contact. It came from experience with abusive handling, he supposed. But he wanted those men's rough, sweaty hands off his arms, and he wanted them off _now. _Their grip unsettled him more than the knife that was tickling his neck did.

The previous hubbub of the pub hadn't died down at all. Apparently, violent confrontations were nothing out of the ordinary here. Around this little drama, men laughed raucously and clinked mugs. Pein was fleetingly glad that he hadn't stooped _that _low yet.

"New kid on the block, are you?" Hitoro hissed into his ear. His breath was putrid, a nauseating mix of rotting teeth and alcohol. "You really _are _a nothing more than a kid. You're what, seventeen? Well, this is no place for someone like you, no place to play games with someone like me." Pein just had time to be amused at the fact that this Hitoro had overestimated his age by two years before the pressure of the blade on his skin intensified.

He stiffened. He'd be darned if he was going to let this lowlife cutthroat draw his blood. But he knew enough about the effects of his top technique to decide that using it without so much as a warning was unethical. "Let me go, and I will fight you properly," he spoke up quietly. "Keep restraining me, and there will be no fight."

"I know _that _already," Hitoro snorted contemptuously. Pein could feel the vibrations in Hitoro's knife, caused by his fingers tightening on the handle, readying themselves for the killing stroke. Well, he'd been notified of the risk, even if he'd been too stupid to understand it. Pein turned his lethal eyes on Hitoro's.

The hatred became easier to summon every time, and Pein could now do it with very little prompting. Just the feel of those men's dirty fingers squeezing his wrists was enough for this. He controlled the uncontrollable rage, pushing it up and out through his penetrating gaze. As he released the tidal wave of hate on Hitoro, he tempered it carefully, softening its effects. It would still devastate the man's system, but the pain would wear off, and hopefully leave him sane.

Hitoro dropped to the ground. His numb fingers lost their hold on the knife, and Pein caught it between his chin and shoulder, unable to use his arms.

The noise was unbelievable. It seemed that by lessening the power of the technique, he had unwittingly unlocked the victim's vocal expression of the pain. Hitoro's screams were ear-splitting, slicing through the sound of laughter and talking that rapidly petered out. When his shrieks finally faded to a heartrending whine, complete silence was left in their wake.

Hitoro's men released Pein immediately, suddenly not wanting to be anywhere near him. Pein grimly relished their terror as he reached up to grasp the knife that was still being pinned down by his chin. His hand closed over an odd bump in the blade's handle, but he ignored it for the moment. Everyone was staring at him, rethinking their first impressions of this young man who was turning out to be a huge threat.

Pein bent down, Hitoro's knife clasped in his hand. He heard the sound of about thirty breaths being sucked in collectively - the spectators thought he was going to gut Hitoro as he lay on the floor. Instead, he neatly slipped the knife back into its owner's belt. He looked up and said calmly, "He'll recover."

No one moved. The drunkest men were more alert than they ever were even in sobriety.

Then someone spoke. Pein whirled around and was surprised to see the mouth of the plant-man moving slightly. "Get Hitoro out of here," he ordered, and it seemed, somehow, that only the white side of his face was speaking. This absurd notion was reinforced by the fact that his black side added a comment in a much deeper, darker voice. "_Do it now." _

Hitoro's men didn't seem astounded by the two separate voices. They did hasten to obey, however, shaking as they grabbed their leader's body and dragged him off. Pein watched them, then turned back to the stranger, sitting down again. He waited until the drunken activity in the pub resumed, albeit more hushed than usual, before saying abruptly, "Who are you?"

"Zetsu," the man replied without hesitation, in his even, _white _voice.

Pein followed up with a question. "What is this?" He opened his palm, revealing a large ring. It was the bump he'd felt on Hitoro's knife handle, which had been concealed first by Hitoro's hand and then his own. He had slipped it off while returning the blade to its place in the man's belt.

Zetsu looked down at it blandly, then back up at Pein. "It's a ring," he stated. "I've noticed it on Hitoro before. My guess is he stole it."

Pein nodded slowly, bringing the object up to his eye to examine it closely. There was a kanji marking on it, in a style resembling the one on the ring Pein wore on his thumb. The symbol was so small that it was hard to discern, but he thought it read 'Black Tortoise'.

Under Zetsu's expressionless but watchful gaze, Pein slipped his own ring off his finger and let it rest in his palm beside the Black Tortoise. Oddly, the ring he'd been wearing was warm, while this new one felt cold on his skin. Unthinkingly he channelled Chakra to his hand, trying to force some heat into the artefact. But no matter how much he concentrated his Chakra on that ring, it stayed at the same chilly temperature. His own ring was now burning hot. Finally, Pein picked up one ring in each hand and pressed them together, trying to transfer the heat.

For a nanosecond, nothing happened. Then, all of a sudden, he felt a strong spark, like a sizzling burst of energy between the rings. The shock left his fingers momentarily numb, and he dropped the Black Tortoise. It fell into the waiting hand of Zetsu, who wordlessly returned it to him. Pein took it - it was now as warm as his ring normally was.

He stared into Zetsu's eyes - they were different, one perfectly round, the other more oval, both luminous green and without pupils. Strange eyes, like his own, with a stranger body. Had they brought him as much misfortune as Pein's had?

He suddenly held out the Black Tortoise ring to Zetsu. "Take it," he said.

Zetsu's gaze lingered on the kanji for a moment as he replied, "It isn't mine." His black side chuckled throatily at some inside joke.

"It isn't mine, either." Not an exceptionally convincing argument, but enough, as Zetsu reached out and accepted the ring, sliding it onto his little finger. Pein, feeling as if his mission here was done, stood up. "We'll meet again," he promised, and turned away.

As he disappeared through the pub's door, eliciting many curious and wary glances, he almost took his own ring, "zero", off. It was still blisteringly hot, burning his thumb. But as he walked briskly down the street, it cooled down, little by little, until it had returned to its ordinary lukewarm status. He rubbed the kanji drawing, musing over the odd behaviour of a supposedly inanimate object.

Zetsu and his Black Tortoise. They would meet again, he could feel it. Somehow, now they were connected.

* * *

It only took that one occurrence, and a few others like it, for the rumours of a young, skilful crime lord to spread everywhere. Pein fell into the role with ease. No criminal, common or not, petty or dangerous, could stand up to his prowess with weapons. No one had a tongue quite so smooth and persuasive as his, and no one was more renowned and more mysterious in the many underworlds of society. 

Pein was not ashamed to admit that he took what he needed without payment. It was his living, his means of survival. Throughout his first year of thievery, blackmail and illegal dealings in general, he listened and learned, watched and did. He was good at all four of those things, and they were really all you needed for life.

He was feared, mainly for his lack of mercy. His threats, however subtle, never failed to be carried out. When you looked into his eyes, they said, you were doomed.

Pein came to wonder, from the tales he heard of himself, what people saw when they did make eye contact with him. Did they see blood splashing onto the street, filling the cracks in the pavement? Did they see an endless tunnel, cold and black and leading them straight to Hell? Did they see, perhaps, nothing at all? What _was _it, really, that everyone feared so much?

At three and a half, he waved back. At seven, he kept his distance. At sixteen, he'd finally stopped looking over his shoulder for something that would never be there - but when he faced forwards, the wind whipped his face, and it stung.

He'd come far, he knew. But eventually, it all came back to zero, and one was just a cloud on the horizon.

And while they all journeyed toward that horizon, the rain washed another bloodstain away.

* * *

A/N: I don't have much to say about this chapter, except: ZETSU IS HERE! Akatsuki approaches! I'm not sure I understand what I'm getting myself into by bringing in all of Akatsuki...a lot of action (help!), some awesome characters to play with (yay!), and a possibly very long story, for sure. I hope I'm up to the challenge. 

Reviews are welcome. Actually, reviews are forcibly dragged in and locked up against their will. Pretty soon they're going to need a charter of rights for reviews, with authors like me around. Anyway, if you think this entire paragraph is a ploy to convince you to leave comments on this chapter, you're right. Don't let the ridiculous effort I put into my review campaigns go to waste! Thank you for everything!


	9. Chapter 9: Reunion

Ahem...ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

The chapter you've all been waiting for...

The ninth instalment in this piece of literature...

the **Reunion...**

of the most exalted Pein and Konan...

So, without further ado...

**Chapter Nine! **

* * *

Chapter 9 - Reunion

Blue desperately wanted rain. She needed the cleansing it would provide to her tainted soul. She needed the reassurance and familiarity it would bring to this mess of new terrors.

She had never felt so insecure and scared in her life before.

She had flitted in and out of many of the lower pools of society since leaving Amegakure, but this was the harshest by far. She had never imagined that she could have so badly underestimated the cruelty of humans, even after Hanzo. But the men she'd seen in the passage, with an innocent girl, younger than herself - they went beyond any ideas of nastiness she might have had. They'd been _hurting _her..._violating _her...that poor girl...and yet, when they'd turned towards Blue with a greedy look in their eyes, she had run.

She was so ashamed.

She was weak, and cowardly, and arrogant. If she'd been stronger, braver, she could have saved that helpless victim. All this time, for almost a year, she'd been wandering around acting like she was superior to the crooks she'd stooped to assorting with, but she was no better. She was worse - _she _was the one who'd taken off in the other direction, turned her face from a fellow woman's suffering, neglected her duty.

She was no longer a kunoichi.

She couldn't be. Kunoichi were strong defenders of the people. She was a delusional sixteen-year-old girl who couldn't bear the weight of reality. Just the fact that she hadn't seen this earlier proved her unworthiness. She had been _hearing _of repulsive acts of malice for her entire life, and because of that she'd assumed that she knew what they were talking about, that she wasn't naïve. But when she watched them happen, right in front of her, when she lived in the midst of them, when she found herself helpless to prevent them, she couldn't handle it.

She untied her forehead protector, which she had continued to wear even after her desertion of the village. She had believed, in her childish, stupid way, that even if it no longer qualified as a symbol of her home, it still represented the principles and ideals she stood for.

What principles? What ideals? Had it all been just pretend? Maybe Hanzo had had the _right _idea, eliminating shinobi. Did they all fail, in the end?

In a daze of devastation, Blue scratched a long, straight line through the four lines symbolic of Rain that decorated her forehead protector. They were like four miserable, stunted stubs, connected by a disfiguring streak of disappointment.

Blue let the marred forehead protector clatter to the stone ground, wrapping her arms around herself as if her own pain and uncertainty was something she could shield herself from. But she only felt more vulnerable than ever.

She didn't know how she'd managed to hold off the tidal wave for so long, but now it was crashing down on her. She had no goal, no style, nothing left after her own strong beliefs in right and wrong had swept her away. She had grown up thinking she was determined to blaze her own path in the world, and yet her whole life she'd been following a route organized by someone else. And now that she was finally being led by her own instincts, she was on the verge of a breakdown.

Correction: she was in the _middle _of a breakdown. She was so far gone that, although perfectly aware of her meltdown, she could do nothing to stop it. She had heard of being "pushed over the edge", but in this case it was sadly lacking in accuracy. She was not so much falling as floating in the soapy remnants of what had once been a sparkling bubble.

She left the scratched forehead protector lying there on the pavement as she folded herself into an uncomfortable tangle of limbs closer to a ball than a seated position, down a pitch-black, abandoned alleyway. There were so many of them, and never enough streetlights.

If those men found her here, she didn't care.

* * *

Pein was walking, not home but to what he might call his sleeping area, when he almost stepped on it. He'd been at the pub, waiting for that fascinating bit of human-plant mutation, Zetsu. The man himself hadn't showed, but he had heard some interesting things through subtle interrogation. It seemed that he was well-known for some rather - socially infrequent - behaviour in these parts. Listening to a frenetic young man's speculations on the function of Zetsu's digestive system, for example, had been quite amusing. 

He had eventually tired of the obscene activity at the bar, and as a result was now leaning over to pick up an object that his heel had brushed in mid-step. The night was dark, so he had to rely mostly on touch to define it. Its centre felt smooth and metallic, although indented in some spots. As he ran his fingers to either side, he encountered soft fabric.

He wished he could distinguish some kind of shape or colour, but it was simply too black. The only reason he was even able to find his way down the street was because he'd walked this same road so many times before. In spite of his virtual blindness, however, he was not uneasy. He was one of the very few people who could wander in these quarters after dark without cause to fear.

His sharp ears detected the soft sound of clothes rumpling, and he automatically turned in its direction. He thought he could faintly make out the outline of an alley between dilapidated buildings, and stepped prudently towards it. He stopped in the frame of the entrance, leaning lightly against the dirt wall next to it.

Blue thought she saw a figure towering over her, but in her cloud of depression she couldn't swear that everything wasn't just a hallucination. Still, she inquired, "Is someone there?" At least her voice didn't shake or squeak. She sounded calm, resigned.

"Yes, there is." The answering voice could have been rhythmic and musical, if not for the resounding blandness in it. "Is this yours?" He, for the voice was male, held out an indiscernible object. She took it readily, despite the shaking of her arms, and ran her fingers over it, feeling the four short ridges and the deep scratch through them almost immediately. She thrust it back at him wildly, and he caught her hand in his before it made contact with his stomach.

"Take it! Please take it!" she cried, thrashing even though his grip on her fingers was very loose. "I can't - I...I don't want it anymore."

Pein, startled by the girl's sudden intensity, felt a stirring inside him. In the desperate firmness of the woman's tone, he caught a hint of something vaguely familiar...a young, authoritative voice from the past. He tightened his hold on her, then released it completely a moment later.

"Bl...Konan?" The name, never before used, blossomed on his lips.

Her head snapped up in disbelief. No one called her that! She had told no one...except -

"P...P..." His one-syllable name just wouldn't come out, despite its frequent appearances in her thoughts. But she knew it was him. She felt him move closer to her, and instinctively she pushed herself away, hitting a garbage can in the process. There was an echoing thump, followed by a succession of tinny clangs as a presumably small object, which must have been resting on the lid of the garbage, bounced its way down the can to land on the street.

Trying to slow her accelerated breathing, she craned her neck backwards and spotted a glint of gold on the ground - the thing she'd knocked out of place. Whatever the object was, it had to be extremely shiny to be visible in this darkness. She picked it up and poked it - it was a ring. She squeezed it in her fist, her shame doubling. How had she let herself get into this pathetic condition? He would never respect her, not now that he'd seen her like this, weak and unable to cope with life.

She felt him hesitate at her alarm, and then he asked, "What are you doing here?"

"Long story," she replied, fighting for composure. There had been too many revelations this night.

He kept silent, observing her. She considered him too. How could she trust him, after all this time? He had to be very different from the last time she'd seen him. But the pleasure that welled up inside her at finally running into something faintly recognizable was undeniable. Novelty was invigorating, but when it was all you were meeting, it was impossible to find a real sense of security.

She felt a craving to know him, really know him. Now that there was nothing like 'society' or 'law' to motivate her to suppress her inclinations, they were returning in full force. He had been a far-off memory for much too long. And now, at the most unlikely of times, he suddenly became reality again.

"It's...good...to see you again," she said sincerely, feeling foolish crouched there in the mud in comparison to his upright, steady posture. But at the moment, she simply didn't have a leg to stand on.

"There isn't much seeing involved," he commented dryly, and she let out a half-stifled laugh. He didn't strike her as the type of person you'd want to run into in a dark alley at night. So why was holding herself together so much easier now that he was here?

He kneeled down in front of her, very formally, watching the glint in her hand. "May I?" he asked politely. She remembered the overly careful way he'd addressed everyone, even as a young boy. When he'd addressed anyone at all, that is. She let him take the ring, his fingers brushing hers as he removed it.

Pein's eyes flickered from the ring to her face (oh, how he wished he could just _see _her!), and he recalled the bizarre chemistry between Zetsu's ring and his. He pressed this new trinket to his own "Zero", and was rewarded by the same fizz of energy he'd felt last time. This time he was expecting it, though, and didn't drop it.

Something more happened - as the rings shared a spark, they beamed with an orange light. Pein took the opportunity to lift Blue's hand and slide the ring onto her right third finger, taking in the kanji drawn on it as he did so - White Tiger. Strangely fitting for her, although he didn't know why. For a moment, in the White Tiger's glow, the saw the contrast created by his hand on hers, his skin paler, hers smoother.

"What does it mean?" she asked, slightly distrustful, withdrawing.

"I don't know," he said sombrely, memorizing the feeling of her slender fingers in his. "Something. Or nothing."

_Nothing _reminded Blue of everything she'd been hiding from, and she turned away, sickened by herself. "I'm not a ninja anymore, Pein," she whispered. She felt him stiffen for a second as she addressed him, and she wondered if it had been as long since he'd heard that name as it had been since she'd spoken it.

"I never was," he said lightly. "But somehow, we both are, Konan." He wanted to see her more than ever now. But if he saw her, that would mean that she would see him too, and he was afraid of that. When she looked into his eyes, there was no telling what she'd think. Would it be better to conceal himself in shadows forever, rather than emerge into the light and subject himself to her judgment? What right did he have to desire mercy from her, when he never showed it to anyone else?

But still, he desired it.

She was Konan now. He had made it so. She knew that when the dawn came, she would be someone new. And she was filthy and frightened and full of endless, irrational yearning. She leaned towards him, because he was closer than anything else, than anything had ever been, and she needed that closeness. But she needed something else too. "I want rain," she said, huddled up, begging. "I need the rain."

Pein fingered what he now realized was Konan's forehead protector, thoughtful. The rain? It was an element, a thing he respected. She spoke of it as a cure for an incurable disease, as a last, shining hope. He raised his unfathomable gaze to the starless sky. He could try, anyway - for her. If he hoped too, if he was truly without limits...

There were no beginning, weak raindrops, a warning before the storm. There was only an immediate, drenching downpour. They both marvelled at the simplicity, the power of it. She looked at him in awe, and wondered who he was. He wished he knew. And they stayed there, side by side, their clothes sticking wetly to their skin, their hair dripping, the heat from their rings fading, chilled by the night's tears. But he liked it.

He liked sitting there, soaked to the bone, resting in a steadily growing icy puddle. With her.

* * *

A/N: Heh...sorry about the beginning. I just couldn't resist the melodramatic touch. Anyway, hopefully I did it justice. This chapter was seriously hard to write - I was completely stuck after the first bunch of paragraphs. Finally I got a tiny flash of inspiration (late at night, as usual), and then I just let myself go. And this is what I ended up with.

I broke 100 reviews! It made me sooo happy. This is the first story of mine that's reached 100+ reviews, and I'm so proud of that :) Thank you all for your support - it really keeps me on track. Constructive criticism, encouragement, you've given it all to me, and I'm very grateful. I tried to make this long-awaited chapter one of the best so far, just for you wonderful readers suffering from a serious PeinxKonan addiction. Please tell me if I succeeded!

Once again, thank you. To show my appreciation, I won't even bother you with an overly enthusiastic plea for reviews. I am, however, looking for comments, as always. So please, drop me a line!


	10. Chapter 10: Appearances

_We all try to be somebody_

_But the world around us makes it so cloudy_

_When we all trust where we're supposed to_

_But the blood on our hands says we're not close to the answer yet_

I heard that lyric and randomly thought of Pein, and maybe Jinsei too, with his talk of somebodies. It's from the song _What Do We Know _by Thousand Foot Krutch. Anyway, done quoting for now. But I love finding snatches of lyrics that fit a story I'm writing or reading.

I updated a day early, with a pretty long chapter too, if I do say so myself. I thought that writing with Pein and Konan together would be easier, but it's actually not. Disappointing. Oh well, I got this one done, and let's take it one step at a time, shall we?

Chapter 10, for your pleasure (mine too, 'cause I'm not that generous.)

* * *

Chapter 10 - Appearances 

Pein let the rain stop once she was asleep. It was surprisingly easy to control; as simple as letting his mixed animosity and amity towards her cancel each other out. He stretched as the sky gradually lightened. Looking around at the grimy streets, he could see why she wanted rain. The rain left everything _glistening, _somehow. Fresh. Not filtered, but a bit more wholesome than before.

If the unexplored powers of his eyes could reach as far as the heavens, perhaps he really _was _limitless. Could he convince the dawn to show itself earlier? He tried, but it took its own sweet time. Oh, well. Mother Nature was not one to be hurried.

When morning at last lifted its dewy head from the pillow of night, they awakened with it.

At least she did. His eyes, however, were open to see the sun's first timely, timid rays. But they had a better place to look than at the sunrise, no matter how exquisite it was.

Pein had been watching her face for longer than she had been looking upon his, and he didn't think she was beautiful. 'Beautiful' was a meaningless term for him - it had never played enough of a role in his life to make a lasting impression on him. Beauty and ugliness seemed irrelevant to him when there was _difference. _Difference was impossible to overlook - everyone saw difference, felt difference, reacted to difference. Sameness? There was no such thing. Similarity, yes, but even similarity was rare in Pein's field of vision. He didn't know whether this made him more or less observant than the average person.

But he couldn't even agree with the word 'average'. If everything and everyone was so different, so individual and separate, there couldn't be any average, could there? He didn't think so.

Thinking, he found, was what you did when you had nothing else to do and were desperate for something, _anything, _to hold you down and make you real. And once it became a fully developed habit, it could be startlingly annoying. Sometimes he was sure that thinking distanced you from reality. Other times he would have told anyone who asked that without thinking, there could be no reality.

And there he went, thinking again.

Her face, he felt, was living proof of his private theories. Nothing in it was quite like anything else. The angle of her chin - slightly square, yet pointed at the same time, that was unique. The wave of her hair - the way it fell beside her scalp, more jagged than a rock at its ends and smooth as silk the rest of the way through, that was uncommon. The heavy, accented eyelids - covering half of her dark irises, but never hiding her intensity, they were different. It all was. _She _was. It pleased him, kind of.

What would she think if he confided his reflections to her? Would she look at him the way others tended to, one-third scared, one-third fascinated, one-third something unidentifiable that varied from person to person?

Thoughts, he concluded, had their own realm. And even if you were supposed to reign over that kingdom, you rarely did. They ruled themselves, without the need for democracy or politics or any type of government at all.

How odd, and yet logical, that humans, so much more solid and definable, couldn't do the same.

* * *

Konan's thoughts were not much more typical than Pein's, partly because of the originality of what she was looking at. The sight of his serious features jolted her into wakefulness more effectively than any ear-splitting alarm clock could.

Either her mind had been subconsciously changing her visual image of his face over the years, or he had transformed. Everything was still there - the many confounding rings in his sharp azure eyes, the frown lines (which, absurdly, seemed to make the smoothness of his skin more apparent rather than less so), and the russet, energy-charged hair. But the balance was completely off now. Some features were so prominent that they blocked out others, while some seemed to have retreated and were now just faint stamps lying under a layer of skin. She realized with a start that he was _older. _

And, oh my, the piercings. The _piercings. _She counted them - there seemed to be twenty-two. Whatever had possessed him to get so many...so many...what could you even _call _that?

Still, the effect wasn't bad, if you looked at it as a whole. They attracted attention to his ears, which had an exceptionally nice shape to them. And they also took attention away from his dizzying eyes, which were a bit too concentrated to provide pleasure to an onlooker. But the piercings themselves were so outlandish.

They were no weirder than his eyes, she supposed. Those were watertight eyes, eyes that could betray you or save you within the space of a blink, eyes that never made a slip. Eyes that did so much more than just see. They were elegant, raw, and deadly. They were not something that could be properly described in words; they were not something that could be properly felt in emotions. But they certainly stirred up plenty of feelings in the bosom of the viewer. She was torn between wanting to lose herself in them and needing to look away from their brutality.

She was irresistibly drawn to his movement. If he blinked, she stared at his deep, coarse eyes. If one of his knuckles jumped, her gaze flew to his hand. And now that his lips moved, she watched his mouth, as he spoke the words with no more emphasis than if they'd been a breath.

"Konan," he said, then paused. "Are you...frightened of me?" It was something he badly needed to know.

"Do you think I should be?" she asked, taken aback. His inquiries were never what you'd expect.

He took careful note of that prefix 'do you think'. It made it a question of opinion rather than fact. He weighed himself, compared her to him in a complicated equation of emotions, actions and guesswork. "It would be better if you were."

She smiled at him, then stopped suddenly as if afraid she'd offend him with a manifestation of happiness. Then, stubbornly, the smile returned, refusing to be conquered by an outside source. "I'll consider it, then."

It was all he could ask for, even if he didn't particularly want it anyway. He stood, and she stood with him. Even though they stood at approximately the same time, he waited for about a second for her to reach full height. He had a fluidity she didn't, an imitable, steady grace. She felt strangely outclassed by him, even if she didn't hold with things like inferiority complexes.

He was observing her, and she felt obliged to say something. "I'm all right now," she said, more hesitantly than she'd intended. And she was, mostly. Her moment of weakness had passed, washed away by the rain of salvation, and she could live again, gain and lose and hold together. He simply nodded.

She waited for him to lead her somewhere, to ask her something else, but he didn't. He looked at the sky, at the newly risen sun. He didn't even squint against its painfully blinding light. Perhaps his eyes didn't need to. She followed his gaze as far as she could without damaging her vision, and said, "Isn't the light beautiful?"

He didn't glance her way, and when he spoke his voice was so definite that debate wasn't an option. "No."

But still he kept on staring, staring at the sun and its not-beauty.

* * *

The strangest thing about his eyes was that they were just as bright in the unadulterated rays of the sun as in the deadest of darknesses. Trivial things like night and day made no difference to the wicked luminescence of those green coals sunk into his face.

Perhaps he was proud of his neon emerald orbs - no one had ever cared to get close enough to ask. One thing was for sure, they were his only distinctive facial feature. The rest of his head was smothered in a swathe of grey fabric, effectively concealing all of his expressions. This was something to be thankful for, as the select few who had been unfortunate enough to gaze upon his smile were still regretting it to this day. Maybe he was proud of that too.

Or maybe, in the tradition of most crude yet skilled criminals, he didn't care what anyone thought as long as he got out with the money.

At the moment, he exercised his patience as he waited and watched from his vantage point. His fingers itched as electric blue Chakra shimmered at their tips. His Chakra was more impulsive than he was; it circulated in his system, mingling with his frozen blood and tugging at his ligaments. It was like a springy elastic, coiling inside him. Finally, giving into its pull, he let the blue threads of energy shoot out of his hands and wrap themselves around a helpless, forlorn tin soup can lying on the ground. He put it out of its misery with one well-placed, powerful squeeze.

It was crushed so abruptly that not even a crunch was heard. Water, a product of last night's rain, dripped from its flattened ends.

He hadn't taken his eyes off the target throughout this process, but he felt the relief of releasing his pent-up anticipation. He followed every movement of his next victim, the cells in his fingers buzzing as they prepared for their upcoming role.

_How did that amateur get such a huge bounty on his head? _he wondered, staring malignantly at the tousled auburn mop of hair that stood out in the centre of the marketplace. This guy, his target, was new to the business, had only been in it for a year. And yet he was already widely known for his utter lack of mercy and insensitivity to the pain of those who got in his way. This blue-eyed boy was trouble, but that bounty was temptation personified.

Maybe he felt some light measure of remorse at the fact that he was contemplating the murder of a minor. Maybe somewhere in his corrupt, hard-wired hearts, there was a trace of empathy, the last dregs of an empty cup of coffee. But innocence was for idiots and weaklings, not grown men who looked out for themselves and strived for luxury.

He settled back, blending in with the flecked alley walls, setting himself up for a long wait. A long wait, but hopefully not a dull one, with such a unique opponent to observe and shadow.

He listened to the beating of his multiple hearts, thumping in sync with one another. He would keep to the rhythm and wait for his chance. When the opportunity came around, it would be worth his while.

Almost imperceptibly, his fingers twitched.

* * *

The cobblestone surface of the street sparkled, silver wrappers reflecting the sun's brilliance, shadows trying to evade the light by hiding in the cracks. But they couldn't - it chased them and encompassed them. Konan was glad of that.

Pein turned to her. "Where do you want to go?" he asked. He enunciated phrases clearly, consonants smoothly connecting the vowel sounds, but his lips never came further apart than about a millimetre.

"Anywhere is good," she told him. She just didn't want him to leave her. She _couldn't _take being alone any longer.

_She wouldn't be saying that if she had an inkling of the wide range of areas that "anywhere" includes, _Pein thought, grimly amused. Most of the places he'd been spending the last 365 days in were enough to send her into an instant relapse.

He decided that they were both hungry, so he purchased a loaf of bread and some fruit from a local grocery store. Despite his lawbreaking habits, he normally paid for the things he bought - it was the money itself that he obtained by dishonest means. He glanced at her as he handed the coins to the cashier, looking for a glimmer of accusation or disgust in her face that would tell him she suspected his crooked ways. He tried to tell himself that he didn't care if she didn't want to assort with criminals, that if she walked out, he could make it as if she had never been in his life in the first place.

But he already knew he was perfectly capable of pretending.

They ate as they walked, the refreshing air of the outdoors strengthening their spirits and appetites. He abstained from eating too much, preferring a small measure of hunger to the unpleasant, bloated feeling of overindulgence.

She was shooting sideways looks at him, a sure sign that she wanted to say something. He surreptitiously cocked his head in her direction, a subtle way to let her know he was listening. As predicted, she spoke up. "Sorry about last night," she said, her voice becoming matter-of-fact in an effort not to sound feeble and spineless. "I just...I was having a hard time."

He blinked. An apology? Now _there _was something he didn't hear often in the circles he was part of. "It happens," he said diffidently, in guise of forgiveness. He fingered a coin in his pocket, his only not ill-begotten one. It happens to everyone.

Konan withheld a sigh of relief. Last night had certainly taken its toll on her pride. But there was something she had to know. "Pein..."

She faltered. She realized that she _was _afraid of him. But this, she told herself, was one of the reasons why her interrogation was necessary. So that she could make a decision - to trust or not to trust, to fear or not to fear. "...what do you do? Are you a - like a..." Such eloquence this morning.

"...A criminal?" he finished for her, unembarrassed. He had been waiting for this topic to come up. "In essence, yes."

She was wide-eyed, but she tried to be casual as she inquired, "How bad?"

He matched her nonchalant tone. "Murder. Theft. Various felonies." _The works, _he thought, but he didn't say it out loud. Wasn't it obvious anyway?

She sucked in a breath, stepping a little to the right, away from him. He noticed, but he didn't try to breach the added distance. "Did you - have you ever -" The words got stuck in her lungs on the way up, and they obstructed her airways. It was self-preservation - if she relived through conversation the scene that had traumatized her yesterday, recovery might not be possible.

He spared her, answering unprompted. "I have never touched a woman." _Willing or unwilling. _He had never thought that there would be some of the former, but believe it or not, there were. He had learned his lesson about getting involved with people, especially females, however. Besides, behaviour like that repulsed him. There was blood on his hands, but he would never be stained that way.

Maybe she could read his absolute denial in his face, because she cautiously came a bit closer. He suddenly felt angry and defensive. What right did she have to assume anything about him? How dare she question his principles? What right did she have to make him feel like he had to defend himself to a complete stranger?

People needed to stop judging him. They didn't know! They didn't know, for Heaven's sake!

He looked straight at her, his gaze closed and steely. "I don't need condemnation," he said coldly, "or absolution, either." He kept walking beside her, but only because he made a point of never leaving his back unprotected.

She lowered her head slightly, allowing her cobalt hair to drape itself over her face and hide her from his peripheral view. Then suddenly she snapped upwards, chin high. "I'm not giving you any." He had already seen her open and vulnerable once, and she'd be darned if she'd let him leave her presence thinking she was a delicate, pathetic girl.

He stared back at her, and they challenged each other. Then she said, feeling it was about time she broke the news, "I know. What they did to you, I mean."

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and then he returned to his icy, indifferent demeanour. "Is that why you left?"

"How did you know I left?" she asked immediately. Had she inadvertently poured out her story to him last night?

In answer, he smoothly slid an object from the folds of his cloak and held it up - her damaged forehead protector. She winced at the sight of the rude scratch running through it; that had been a little harsh. _I guess that would pretty much give it away. _Anyway, what were the chances of her meeting up with him, an outcast, if she wasn't an outcast herself? Now that she thought about it, the chances of their meeting even if they _were_ both outcasts were quite small.

She noticed that he was still holding out the forehead protector, expecting her to take it. She shook her head vehemently. "I told you, I'm not a kunoichi anymore. You're more of a ninja than I am. Far more." The words tasted bittersweet coming out of her mouth; they were true, however, and a relief to admit.

"You think so? Really?" he said, almost playfully, and yet he was serious. He tossed the forehead protector up and caught it neatly in his palm. He wasn't sure whether to disagree or let it be. He wasn't sure if disagreeing was correct, either. But she was most definite.

He reached up and tied the forehead protector around his own head. It was an impulse, and he chose to act on it. He let his hands rest on the knot for a moment, debating whether to tear it off or not. He saw a multitude of emotions flit across Konan's surprised face - resentment, relief, annoyance, amusement, astonishment. Then a small, surprised smile took over, and he let his arms fall to his sides.

"It suits you," she told him. He let his eyes meet hers so that she'd know he accepted her opinion. Personally he found acknowledgment to be a pointless waste of energy, but others seemed to like knowing that they were being paid attention to.

"Thank you," he said quietly. He touched the metal that covered his forehead - he could already feel sweat gathering under it. But he somehow knew that the forehead protector was a part of him now, just as he had realized that the piercings belonged in his face the moment he'd looked in the mirror.

Life took on a new look every day.

* * *

A/N: A bit of an odd chapter there. Then again, I say that for every chapter, so by now I'm sure my readers no longer bother to pay attention to my opinions. Which, you know, is fine with me. :P

I'll give you one and a half guesses to figure out who I was talking about in the middle section. What's the half for, you ask? Nothing, because you don't need it. I'll even give you a hint: Pein does not have green eyes. In case you didn't notice.

Okay, I'm done making snide remarks. The customary thanks goes out to readers and reviewers - you make my day:)


	11. Chapter 11: Rumples

I could have waited until tomorrow to upload this, since it's really late, but I had a _need _to post this, if you understand the feeling. I went on a crazy writng-high this evening and wrote for three hours straight. Which may not have been a good idea, but you can judge that for yourself based on the coherency.

WARNING: Action scene, as horrible and hard to follow as ever. Long one, too. For me, that is.

* * *

Chapter 11 - Rumples

She was acutely aware of his gaze on her as she worked. He was utterly silent and unmoving, a model spectator, but his proximity was ruining her concentration.

After they had reached a mutual agreement on the street, Pein had taken her to his own quarters, correctly assuming that she would appreciate a chance to clean and rest up. The first thing she'd done upon arrival, however, had been to ask for a sheet of paper, which he had graciously provided. And so now she sat at his desk, shaping and reshaping a page under her hands, while he perched rigidly on the edge of his bed, tracking her every move.

Her gaze flitted around his room as her fingers toiled. She was a bit surprised at the shabbiness; she was sure he could have gotten himself a better place if he'd wanted one. She wasn't stupid, she'd noticed the way passersby looked sideways at him and then returned to their private conversations with renewed vigour so as not to attract his wrath. Obviously he was _somebody _around here, and probably had the connections to wiggle himself some favours. But this was a ramshackle cabin managed by a testy landlord, with plain walls, drab furniture and a multitude of mouse holes. She voiced her opinion, most of her outspokenness regained. "What made you choose to live here?"

"I don't live here," he responded. She'd noticed that he had a tendency to be curt, even when replying politely. "I stay here, occasionally. It's not the same thing." Seeing that he'd been somewhat unclear, he elaborated. "I don't belong in comfort or luxury. Somewhere like this is more appropriate."

She nodded, wondering how he could possibly understand himself. He didn't strike her as the type to have self-esteem problems, but that last statement... She thought she might know what he meant by the difference between 'living' and 'staying', though. She suspected that she'd stopped living a while ago.

He was scrutinizing her more closely than ever, so intently that she got the feeling he wanted to ask a question. But when the silence broadened, she asked one for him. "What are you thinking?"

"Your hand movements," he said. "They faintly resemble handseals." Konan looked down and tried to see things from his perspective. "_Is _it a jutsu?" he inquired suddenly.

"This?" she said, taken aback by the suggestion. She paused in the middle of making a fold. "Oh, no, this is origami, the art of folding paper. It's a hobby...habit."

Pein's brow wrinkled, then levelled out as she resumed her creasing. "It could be a jutsu," he remarked. This observation excited her. She remembered wanting to get deeper in touch with her origami creations, to make them part of herself. Maybe he had the key!

"Show me...how?" she said, tacking on an inquisitive suffix so that she wouldn't sound commanding, and sounding foolish instead. She stood up and held out her origami, which had taken the form of a bird in flight, trying not to appear childishly eager.

He took it from her and unfolded the creases one by one, smoothing out the paper with brisk gestures. "I don't know how," he told her simply. "Find out." He returned the sheet to her, crumpled and used, but ready to be used again. She stared at it, disappointed. Find out? How did you go about finding out anything when there was no beginning point? There was nothing on that paper. Well, except...

She supposed she might as well start with the rumples.

* * *

Konan found out, slowly, that Pein wasn't easily bored. Sitting on the same hard mattress with the same stiff posture for a couple of hours was nothing to him, it seemed. He stayed there even when she finally abandoned her origami struggles, the paper charred from her efforts to use Chakra to activate it somehow, in favour of using his cramped bathroom. Either he was thinking very hard, or not thinking at all. 

When she emerged from the washroom, satisfied that she looked a notch or two more presentable than the average street girl, he was standing. His stance was very unusual, she noted - it always was. He stood very steadily, feet planted firmly, weight evenly distributed, as if he expected a hurricane to hurl all its might at him and was planning to withstand it.

"I'm going out," he informed her. She nodded, still in the bathroom doorway.

"Sure you trust me?" she asked, only half-joking. "How do you know I won't make off with your stuff?" How _did _he know, really? He seemed to know a lot.

If his voice had been just a tad more expressive, she would have said it sounded wry. "You're not a criminal. That would be me." As it was, he merely sounded factual.

He looked her up and down for a minute, then said, "If you don't want to stay...you don't have to. You can leave. There are many places to go." He reached up, to stroke his chin or perhaps scratch his head, but let it fall before it accomplished any action.

"Yeah. Okay." For the first time in a while, Konan felt as if she were being given options. It was a good feeling, after the unpleasant discovery that the so-called concept of 'freedom' wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Just for that, she owed him another smile, and she granted him one. He didn't smile back, not that she had expected him to, but she thought that the swirl in his blue eyes became a little less stormy.

He turned and strode away, glancing back just long enough to say, "Lock the door after me."

She obeyed.

* * *

Pein was already disgusted fifteen minutes into his outing. He hated debt collecting. When he had to go _collect_ debts, it generally meant that the person he was collecting from didn't want to part with their money. Which also meant that they were sleazy scumbags he wished he'd never associated with in the first place. This one had been honestly stupid, or rather dishonestly so, actually starting a fight. The idiot was now wiser to the ways of the world, or would be when he regained consciousness, and Pein had his cash. 

It was a win-win situation. Except, not really.

Winning just didn't happen. Not when you were a wanted man, not when you were an unwanted man either. Especially not when you were both, like he was. Loss was inevitable, luck was a traitor, and death loomed closer each day. Life was a piranha, making you shiver in fear even when safe on the sand, and snapping viciously at your heels the moment you stepped into the water.

He was in the middle of questioning his own ability to create random analogies when his highly attuned senses caught a whiff of Chakra. This was not exceptional, as the majority of successful crooks had once been shinobi, but it was behaving very oddly. It was moving, throwing itself straight at something - at _him. _He slid to the side, catching a glimpse of a fine bluish wire lashing past him. Chakra threads; he had heard of this type of energy manipulation, but never gotten the chance to fight against it. This would be an excellent opportunity to gauge the versatility of his skills.

The threads were very fast, and expertly controlled - they whipped around him, probing his defences. He knew better than to let them touch him, and he evaded them. He wasn't going to waste his time dodging, however; he needed to figure out where the wires were coming from, and attack the user. He mentally separated the tangle of threads, making full use of his systematically-functioning mind, and followed what he'd guessed was the end of one of the strings to a nearby rooftop. Obviously, the user had to be fairly close to his target for his thread techniques to work - Pein filed that away for reference battle information.

He pumped Chakra to his legs and leaped into the air, letting the Chakra explode beneath his feet to clear away some of the threads. He catapulted himself to the rooftop, a move which his enemy had predicted - the attacker was already moving back, keeping distance between them. Pein paused for a moment, waiting for the threads to catch up with his speedy movement, while he sized up his opponent. Face concealed, a Land of the Waterfall forehead protector, but almost certainly a rebel-nin. The blue Chakra threads originated from the man's hands, but Pein could feel the energy emanating from his entire body. He had covered himself with a Chakra defense; it had an earthy feel to it, element-based. He could tell that it would take a powerful attack to pierce it.

Pein had discovered early on that usually at least half the battle was simply testing your opponent, figuring out his limits, weeding out his weaknesses, forcing him to show his strengths. This was what he proceeded to do, as he tried a varied repertoire of routines and tapped into his power as much as he thought prudent. It worked - the enemy became impatient and revealed an important part of his style - namely, four dangerous growths of some sort that sprouted from his back. Pein was sure that if he could only destroy them, he'd be getting somewhere. The problem was, they were protected by a shield that by now had been almost scientifically proven to be invincible, at least when pitted against jutsus.

The guy was playing him well, Pein had to admit. He was so busy weaving and keeping out of the way of those irritating threads that he never got the chance to make eye contact and secure the ninja's downfall.

This was one of those occasions when Pein would have been glad of an adrenaline charge, some kind of rush to power him and lift him head and shoulders above the rest. But the truth was, nothing like that had ever happened to him, unless you counted the hate surge that activated his eyes. It wasn't that he didn't get a 'high' from a challenging battle - he did, although he wasn't sure if 'high' was the right term to describe the way he felt, like all of his usual abilities had kicked in hard and were working double to make up for something. But it was a consistent, controlled high, so he didn't think it was adrenaline.

In a way he preferred this, because he needed his mind to stay clear. He needed to be able to direct himself, to be in command. When it came to the control of his actions, he would never compromise. It was the reason he never drank – his first and only experience with alcohol had been a nightmare. Throughout his intoxication, he had been wholly conscious of his own incoherency, his incompetence. He had been so self-repelled by it that he had been glad of his following hangover, regarding it as a kind of penance for stupidity.

This position, however disadvantageous, was better than that one. Pein took inventory of everything he knew that might be helpful – the threads couldn't extend too far from their user, the opposing ninja reinforced his attack with those four – bodily extensions? – and he was virtually resistant to ninjutsu. A new approach was required. Maybe it was time to get up close and personal.

Pein channelled Chakra to his hands, cranking up the heat and intensity until his skin blistered. His ring tingled from the raw power, vibrating against his thumb. He knew it wouldn't break, but it was doing a good impression of it. By now every drop of blood anywhere near his palms was screaming in protest, fighting his veins, desperate to escape self-destruction. The pain was awesome, above anything he had ever felt before. He had never realized just how strongly he could affect himself. He poured just a little more force into the agonizing mix, then launched his body, arms outstretched, towards the first of the four hideous growths.

It whipped into his face, ready to leave permanent scars, but he caught it in his bare hands first. It was only when he felt the rhythm pulsating under his grip and heard it beating faintly along with the pounding of his ears that he understood what it was – a _heart. _Another heart, separate from the shinobi's body. He had a sudden urge to release it and wipe his hands somewhere, but instead he squeezed it, transferring his pain to it. It was shielded, but his Chakra was so incredibly concentrated that it didn't stand a chance, and it literally melted in his hands in a stomach-turning mess. He let go immediately, relieved even though he knew he had to do it three times more.

It didn't seem to have been a pleasant experience for the Waterfall nin either, judging from the watery, menacing brightness of his vivid green eyes and the way he was hunched over, obviously in pain. Pein took advantage of his weakness to exhale an explosive ball of fire, straight at the man's chest. It burned his lungs on the way up – he realized belatedly that he should have molded his Chakra more carefully before letting loose such a damaging jutsu. But it worked; the aggressor was engulfed in flames that crackled with such deafening violence that they blocked out every other noise for a few seconds.

When they cleared, the ninja was nowhere to be seen. Pein's head snapped to the ground, and sure enough, there he was, breathing heavily in the middle of the street. Pein noted with satisfaction and some confusion that there were now only two external hearts. What had happened? Wait...was it possible that one of the three had replaced the one destroyed in the fireball? What a mighty defense. Unfortunately, it wasn't Pein-proof.

He landed steadily on the pavement, once again across from his assailant. Before he had completely regained his balance, however, an army of Chakra threads flew at him, and one nicked him on the shoulder as he dropped so low his nose brushed the dirt. He heard a yell of distress from behind, abruptly cut off. He wished half-heartedly, knowing that it wouldn't make any difference and wishes were wastes of time, that he had been introduced to the phrase "innocent bystander" in some other, less vivid manner.

He had to finish this, _now. _Even he couldn't go on forever, and he planned to make sure this battle didn't either.

He planted his feet firmly. He didn't close his eyes, even if it would have helped his focus – to give up your vision when facing a threat was foolhardy. He was running low on Chakra by now, and used some of the hate that came naturally now to fuel his next technique. His hands moved soundlessly, speedily, into seals he had created. The clouds in the sky overhead darkened; was it going to rain? And would it be because of him?

He let energy ripple outward from the centre of his Chakra circulatory system until the world rippled with him. The stones rocked beneath him, lulling his power, egging him on. He let himself seep into the street – he was hard, harder than he'd ever been, colder, emotionless, solid. Not dead, not alive, simply existing in stillness.

Then he dragged it all in.

Not all, actually. He focused on the Chakra-filled being he was fighting and pulled him, as if he were a magnet and the enemy ninja was a helplessly attracted artifact. Good – the bastard was riveted, stuck in the unrelenting grip of the pavement beneath him, pavement that he'd trusted to hold him up, to keep him standing, pavement that had turned against him. Hah! You couldn't trust anything, animate or inanimate.

Pein came back to himself, slightly surprised that he once again had a heartbeat and limbs. Rock and cement lacked these assets. But they had other ones, as he had just seen and manipulated firsthand.

His opponent was glowering, as well as you could glower when only your eyes were visible, but he was stationary. His two exterior hearts, resembling ugly, spiky arms, were rooted to the street, encased in a block of stone, as were his legs. Only his head was capable of movement. He had just become one of the rare victims of Pein's Elemental Uprising. Pein had always found it easy to connect with nature. Well, not connect precisely, but he could watch and wait, and that was all nature needed, really. Once you _knew _something, really _knew _it and all of its intricacies, it was relatively simple to change its shape to suit your needs - transform it into a jutsu, for example. It was what he'd done with his Elemental Uprising.

He waited. His defeated enemy waited. Finally the ninja said quietly, almost disdainfully, "You're no kid."

"That doesn't matter," Pein said blandly. It was amazing how often people prioritized age over everything else and ended up dead.

The odd grunting sound that emerged from the man's throat was chilling. It might have been a laugh. "It doesn't matter? I'll tell you what matters. I just squandered the biggest bounty I've ever laid eyes on. That's never happened before."

Pein kept his cool. He always had. "A bounty? That's what this was?" He half-turned and jerked his thumb toward the fallen figure behind him. "That's what _he _was?" Pein walked over to the corpse of a person who had never been meant to die this night. It was a middle-aged man, not particularly handsome to begin with and made uglier by the bloodied purple cuts caused by Chakra threads. One eye was closed, the other open. Pein chose to focus on the closed one, measuring the short black eyelashes.

This time Pein was sure it was a laugh. "No. That's what _you _were."

He stiffened. "Who are you?" Pein asked.

"Kakuzu." The Waterfall nin was suddenly close-mouthed. Pein could see the criminal in him, in the way he hunted for wealth and did his best to lose sight of his identity. The shinobi who fought the hardest always ran away the fastest. His hatred suddenly vanished and was replaced by a searing contempt. With a jerk of his hand he shattered his Elemental Uprising, and Kakuzu staggered, no longer supported by stone shackles.

Fortunately, he wasn't stupid enough to continue the fight. He knew it was over. He did approach the body of the bystander, however. He managed to sound both regretful and mocking as he said, "Too bad his heart's not beating anymore. I could have used another one." He shot a look at Pein. Pein told him with a glance, _You wouldn't want my heart, even if you could get it. _He looked away.

"Nice ring you've got there," Kakuzu remarked. "Valuable. Probably as good as the one the dead tramp's wearing." Pein hadn't noticed that, but now he saw a band of gold circling the corpse's finger. Kakuzu green eyes shone with greed, but he hesitated and asked Pein with mock politeness, "Want it?"

"You're the murderer," Pein stated, the equivalent of saying, _It's all yours. _

Kakuzu didn't shudder in the act of taking the ring. He was obviously used to robbing dead bodies. He slid it onto his left middle finger, muttering, "Northern Star. Superstitious symbolism. Worth a lot, though." Pein had also recognized the ring's kanji, the style so similar to his own.

The Waterfall ninja stared cynically at Pein. "Deciding whether to kill me or not?"

"I decided that a long time ago." Pein made a sudden hand movement, seeing the look of mixed shock and resignation in Kakuzu's eyes as he waited for death. But all he did was press the surface of his own ring to Kakuzu's recently acquired Northern Star. He applied pressure for a little longer than necessary, knowing that it burned Kakuzu's finger just as it did his own.

Kakuzu pulled back, cursing quietly. "I really hope I never see you again." Now assured that he would be allowed to walk away alive, he turned his back on Pein and whirled down an alleyway. Pein called after him, "But you might."

They would, he knew it. He could tell that Kakuzu had murdered before - this man was not his first kill by any means. But it was this murder, the accidental murder of a nobody, that counted.

This murder was the point of Fate where their two paths, more alike than they seemed, would cross again.

* * *

Pein stopped, weary after his battle and nearly home, but afraid to go further. 

He couldn't bring himself to take another step forward. If he did, he would be close enough to his cabin to sense her Chakra. To know if she had stayed or not. He lifted his foot, then took a step backward instead. _Yes, go back, why don't I? _he thought bitterly. _A lonely past, a lonely present. Not much to choose between. _

Finally he lunged forward, bracing himself against his own door. Feeling for her through the cracks in the wood, shaking, unable to find the doorknob...then, he relaxed.

She was there.

* * *

A/N: A rare, brief moment of Pein-weakness at the end...even he breaks down sometimes.

A not-so-rare, weird chapter. Was anyone able to follow the battle scene with Kakuzu? I made a big effort on it, did research on Kakuzu's fighting style and everything, but I think I failed at clearly describing what happened. Hopefully you all at least realized that Pein came out victorious.

I think Kakuzu was pretty OOC here. I just couldn't get into his dialogue at all here...I think I was having trouble differentiating between his personality and Hidan's, lol. Sorry about that.

If you had any thoughts at all while reading this, do tell. Review time! Please?


	12. Chapter 12: Belief

I was afraid I might have to wait until tomorrow to get this out, but I managed to snag the computer and upload it. Anyway, beware of random mood swings (in both characters and writing styles, most likely) while reading this, because it was very...erratic. I wasn't too happy with it; it feels like a bit of a filler, and I don't think it's particularly clear. It also lacks smooth transitions, probably. But as always, I post it and see what happens.

* * *

Chapter 12 - Belief

He tossed his cloak onto the bathroom floor, deciding to tackle the removal of the bloodstain on the right shoulder later. Or maybe he'd just leave it in - what was it you called things like that? Battle souvenirs? Either way, despite the lack of hygiene, he had other affairs to occupy his mind with.

He rolled up his mesh sleeves for better access to the crimson slash marring his upper arm, not wincing as the material brushed the tender skin. He filled his palm with water and soap and slapped it over his shoulder, the wound sizzling as it disinfected. His face looked tight and drawn in the mirror, and he rested against the sink as rivulets of reddish water trickled down the drain. His piercings resembled boulders in the midst of a white wasteland.

He turned finally, rotating his arm to reduce the burning aftereffect of the soap. Konan's eyes flickered from his cut to his expression, and perhaps some of his fatigue showed, because she asked softly, "Are you okay?"

He nodded, answering the trivial question only because she hadn't made a fuss when he'd entered. She'd given him time to heal, one of the few who ever had. When you were given time, you didn't need that much - a few minutes had been more than enough for him to settle himself, but he knew she must be curious and impatient. And he felt odd, as if he couldn't trust his own composure.

Konan watched him carefully, privately assessing his condition. He had fought with someone, and most likely won. But he looked tired and dissatisfied, and she couldn't help but wonder what kind of victory it had been.

A silence lay suspended between them, but it wasn't a finishing silence; it was incomplete, hinting at more to come. A silence that only patient people could make use of.

Pein strode over to the window and threw it open, feeling an invigorating rush as the sharp evening air invaded his sinuses. He had always preferred cool temperatures to warm ones; the cold stimulated his reflexes and allowed for split-second thinking, unlike the sluggishness of heat.

He whirled suddenly, proving his own doubts right, and Konan felt the hairs on the back of her neck prick upwards. She took a purposeful step back, finding herself unable to predict his actions. Did he mean her harm?

"What do you know about me?" he demanded, his voice cracking with harshness. The words sounded forced to her ears - not as if he didn't want to say them, but as if his tongue and mind had conflicting interests. Agitated, he turned from her again, slamming the window shut with a rattle. The violence of the gesture caused his gash to reopen, a blot of blood appearing on top of it. He ignored this, pacing up and down the room.

Apparently he'd done less settling than he'd thought, because he was churning in a pool of water that someone had just flung a rock into. Gears were shifting inside him, wheels turning and grinding from lack of oil. He couldn't be content in ignorance much longer; there were some things that were not meant to be left alone.

"I don't know who I am." It sounded ridiculous, but at least he had regained some control. "I'm an outsider everywhere, to everyone. To myself." He saw her flinch as he spat the words out like rotten meat, chewed and digested and regurgitated in a bile of self-hatred. Maybe he was only as much as his actions declared him to be - a heartless cutthroat, a loner, a sinner. Well, at least he was good at being a villain.

No, he didn't really believe that. He refused to believe, period. Belief was a weakness, another way for you to be targeted. Belief was evidence of a conscience, an item that Pein was fairly sure he shouldn't have.

Konan tried offering some advice. "Before you can get to know yourself, you need to let other people in. Then you can make distinctions." By the end she was wishing she hadn't said anything; what kind of useless counsel was that anyway?

Pein thought she was missing the point. He had learned long ago that he was nothing _but _distinctions. He shared nothing in common with the rest of the population, nothing at all.

He dropped stiffly down onto the bed, his teeth buzzing from the echoes of all the things he _wouldn't _yell, his stomach aching from the inner monster he _wouldn't _allow to swallow him up. He despised his own spiteful strength.

He remembered the way the Waterfall nin had uttered "Kakuzu", with hurried distaste, in a rush to get away from his own name. He remembered Konan's shivering resignation, her despair - _I'm not a ninja anymore, Pein - _as she rejected her destiny. He remembered Jinsei telling him with a cynical grin, "I stopped being fond of my own face…" Looking back, he was sure he hadn't been joking. They were all people who had put up a fight and evaded themselves when they realized they could no longer tell the difference between a win and a loss. One was dead, one was immoral, and one hung in purgatory, here with him.

He wanted to save her, he really did. But he was so far along the path to hell that dragging her with him would be worse than leaving her to wither in nonentity. And she didn't know that.

She approached him, stopping beside the bed. "I read your file. You were found just outside Konoha…" she began hesitantly.

Something else the Amegakure Elders had chosen not to share with him. He closed his eyes. "What else was in there?"

"Everything else was in there," she disclosed, a trill of anger adding sincerity to her simple vocabulary. "I'm sorry."

Pein's thoughts were backtracking. _Konohagakure…_ It was one of the largest shinobi villages, he'd heard. Even more scope for prejudice and cruelty. But it was a place where information would be plentiful - a place where there was usually something for everyone. And perhaps for him, there would be some means of identification. Everybody had a family (_had _being the keyword), right? And if his had originated somewhere around Konoha, it was logical that he'd be most likely to find relatives there.

He realized he was grasping at straws, overreaching, getting so caught up in personal curiosity that he was setting himself up for misery. But he had been so unfocused lately - an unwilling drifter among weak souls, afraid of becoming one of them - and now that he had a goal, he could calm down. Serenity slowly overcame his unrest, seeping through the widening cracks in the wall he'd built to offer protection from pain - but also from comfort, which could be twice as dangerous.

A sudden spread of icy wetness on his shoulder brought him out of his reverie, and he spun to see Konan holding a cool cloth to his wound, quenching the blood flow. He could feel the five individual pressure points from each of her fingertips through the towel, and though it stung, he let them remain there.

Her voice, containing firm reassurance, was close to his ear when she spoke. "You have more of an identity than you think."

He wasn't sure if she could see his eyebrow raise from her viewpoint, but she must have sensed his invitation to continue somehow.

"You're a shinobi," she told him. Her tone was clear and candid - a factual tone applied to subjective matter. But he could hear her full honesty, her unerring faith in the truth of her statements, and it made her words all the more meaningful. "You're a lawbreaker. You're a man. You're Pein. You're here, now."

He could believe that.

* * *

It would have been amusing, to some degree, to say that the two of them, one a broad-shouldered, proud artist, the other a cold, ingenious conqueror, stood at the edge of yet another boundary on a mere whim. But it would have been a lie.

Pein didn't have whims. He had ideas that were inspired, formed and carried out with surprising speed and alacrity, but he did nothing without thinking it through. He was analytical of even something as intangible as his intuition. It was as close to infallibility as he could manage.

So here he stood, one foot across the invisible line that would take him out of the peaceful little village he'd spent a fair length of time in, with his new comrade, who had shown herself to be a steadfast mix of help and hindrance. Well, the village hadn't really been peaceful, he would admit that. It was far too riddled with illegitimate dealings, unethical people and small-town, big-time viciousness for any sentiment of 'peace' to ever make its permanent home there. But he couldn't blame it for that, and it wasn't a bad place to be, if you had half a brain and some street smarts.

He took the second step, bringing him outside the range of this particular location in time. It didn't feel very momentous - there was no significant rise in anticipation, no epiphany, no sense of adventure or beginning. It was simply one stride in the life of a self-made fugitive who was doing his best to learn to walk un-crippled. There was nothing extraordinary about the soft crunch of dirt under his sandal, or about the bending of his knee upon impact. Unless, of course, you counted the simplicity of it - which was, actually, incredible.

He looked at her, considered saying something about their destination - Konoha, or wherever else grabbed their fancy along the way - maybe checking if she honestly didn't mind making the journey, or asking her about herself, to get to know her better. But then she flicked a strand of cobalt hair with hands that itched to get moving, and he decided that silence was severely underrated. Silence and companionship were not mutually exclusive, after all. So he started to walk.

She paced at his side, wild and graceful as a feral tigress.

* * *

The trip to Konoha was very different from the one he'd made upon his desertion of Rain.

First of all, he wasn't alone. Her presence was always easily felt, and she didn't try to mask it. She seemed, in fact, somewhat pleased to be accompanying him, which was weird. She talked more than he did, but she never let it be a one-sided conversation - she drew responses from his idle mouth, refusing to allow him to be a passive listener to her monologues. He once asked her why she was so insistent on his speaking, and she told him it was because he needed a reminder that he was capable of communication with the outer world. It had been a bold, frank remark, but it appealed to him, and he didn't regard it as an insult. But he wondered if she knew that she belonged less and less to the 'outer' world, and more to his own personal domain every day.

She had wanted explanations, of course. Why had he left? How had he managed to kill the Amekage? What he done since then? It brought up unpleasant memories, but the blunt way in which she presented her questions soothed him. She didn't try to extract knowledge subtly, to spare him and yet betray him at the same time. She gave him the choice of answering straight out or avoiding replies and coming back to it another day.

She didn't begrudge him his misdeeds, either. At one point, she had interjected, "People in high places generally seem to be bastards, don't they?" It was then that he knew that if she didn't _agree, _at least she understood and tolerated his reasoning. He found it easier to open up to her interrogation after that.

Konan was tenacious, as he consistently noticed. She had brought a stash of paper with her, and she studiously attempted to achieve something with her origami. But she could never get further than giving her miniature creations movement, which wasn't really a useful battle technique. One night, as they sat on opposite sides of their campfire, she dropped her paper disgustedly and exclaimed in frustration, "I can't _feel _it enough!"

It was a strange phrasing, but Pein knew what she meant. Making a soul connection with an inert object was hard, to put it mildly. But then again, it was only inert as long as you saw it that way. And once you had shared pain with it, you couldn't possibly think of it as non-living. Inspiration striking, he held out his hand. Her eyes smouldered as she gave over possession of the paper, he noted with satisfaction. She was angry with it - that meant there was some kind of relation between her emotions and the entity.

He dangled the paper over the fire until a corner caught flame, curling upwards as tiny waves of red, orange and yellow danced this way and that along its surface, the spotless white turning to smoky brown under his grip.

"Can you feel it burn?" he inquired, shaking it slightly to let the blaze spread. When she stared, he pushed her on. "Try."

Determinedly she reached over and touched one fingertip to the flaming sheet. It was enough, as her mind processed the blistering pain and associated it with the paper she had put so much of herself into. She snatched her hand back, cradling it as her entire body trembled with a hot, intense agony. She knew she'd done it, and the pain was no torture - it was a celebration, a manifestation of her newly developed ability.

Pein felt the heat too, and he blew out the flame on the paper before it could singe his skin. He saw her relax, the elation apparent in her gaze, snapping with sparks brighter than those of the orange flames in front of her, and the way her face flushed, glowing from a combination of ecstasy and moonlight.

She leaned toward him, her expression rejuvenated and alight, eager for another taste. Shadows ran down her cheeks like gray rivers, flowing to the black heavens of night above, and if the blaze hadn't been crackling, Pein was sure he could have heard them rushing up to join the darkness, whispering secrets in the language of the stars.

He began to tear the charred paper into pieces, each rip loud and cutting. He watched her as he did so, watched her writhe as she was torn apart and glued back together, as she felt more deeply than she had ever imagined possible. She broke into fragments, her sharp features bending and flattening as they became multi-faceted sheets, as her blood and bones, wants and needs whirled in the breeze in a hurricane of paper.

He could feel the bits of her flying around him, a corner of one sheet brushing his face every now and then. He could see the complexity of her personality, reflected in the ever-changing shapes of the origami that was ingrained into her disposition - now a butterfly, now a flower with unfurling petals, now a perfect square, and he rejoiced with each metamorphosis. Her very essence was right there with him, floating on the wind, and breathed it in, then exhaled so that he could be part of it too.

She intoxicated him, he encouraged her. She exhilarated him, he energized her. She satiated him, he fulfilled her. It was a circle of emotion, one thrill blending into the next.

When he could no longer hear his own heartbeat through the mad pounding of his own excitement and the music of her laughter, he settled down and set about putting out the fire, not entirely able to quell the scorching chills trickling up his arms.

She assembled himself until she had solidified enough to feel human sensations again - the hard ground underneath, the cold atmosphere nipping her skin. Her hair billowed around her head as the last slim wisps of paper returned to flesh.

"I felt it," she said, and smiled, though it was a poor representation of what she had just been through. He nodded back at her, and for a moment she thought his piercings were diamonds - they glittered when he looked down.

One small bluish ember, ruddy and radiant, was all that separated them as their wonder faded into dreams.

* * *

A/N: It was a little shorter than usual - sorry. But it was really a struggle to even get that far, as you can probably tell. When I force myself to write, it shows.

This is part of the reason why I'll tell you now that I may not update regularly every week anymore. I'll try, of course, but if I'm a bit late, please don't begrudge me it. I've started writing some original fiction, which takes up a lot of time too, and I just find that this story's slowing down a little, and I can't toss out chapters as fast. This is not to say that I'm not still enthused about continuing it; I definitely want to finish it, to cross this bridge. But if updates come at random times, that's the way it is. Don't worry - I'm pretty sure posts will still come often enough, since I write at a decent speed, I think.

Thanks for your understanding and support:)


	13. Chapter 13: Eruption

Does the chapter title make you curious?

Read on.

* * *

Chapter 13 - Eruption

Pein had never experienced a lack of material for reflection, but now his brain was in overdrive. Twice the company, twice the thoughts - now, not only did he have his own wonderings to contend with, but he also wondered about her wonderings. Yet another complication for an already complex mind.

Though he masked it well, Pein took a keen interest in his surroundings. He memorized signs and inscriptions detailing everything from town heroes' dates of birth to population counts, filed away colours and shapes and recorded sounds in his built-in audio system. For him, observing and responding were one and the same.

He always kept an eye out for people. Especially people in connection with rings.

It was Konan who found him first, really. She had stopped in a dusty street in the Sand village of Sunagakure, made golden by the sun reflecting from dirt particles, to glance through the partially open window of a fine, if minuscule, house. Pein hovered behind her, adhering to his perpetual desire to know what she found fascinating.

Inside the domicile, it looked as if a private teaching lesson was taking place. A woman, aged but seemingly energetic, was gesticulating in the direction of a teenager with a sleek head of light burgundy hair. His slim bangs drooped attractively over his ruddy forehead, and he had an engaging, triangular face with lazy but by no means unintelligent eyes. Their amber tint matched that of his hair. He appeared to be listening attentively to the old lady's lecture, every so often smiling slightly and replying quietly to her comments. For a moment Pein was both painfully and pleasantly reminded of his younger self, thirsty for knowledge and hanging onto the words of his revered mentor. But that part of him had given up dominance a long time ago.

Mechanical figures that resembled life-like, expertly crafted puppets lined the walls of the room, and the elderly woman sometimes reached out to touch one, as a reflex, it seemed. A few times, the marionette jerked under her finger, causing Konan to start violently. Pein had a hunch, but it was only confirmed when thin strings of Chakra shot out of the teenager's fingertips and slid into the puppet's wooden sides - it was Chakra puppetry, a specialized attack method.

The puppet that the youth was currently controlling, rapidly synchronizing its joints to lift a kunai, was sculpted in the form of a girl. Her face was serene and yet grim, hardened and dehumanized by the deep lines carved into her statuesque visage. The red-haired teen flexed his hands very nimbly, the Chakra strings wavering gracefully through quick patterns as they extended in the air. He was obviously gifted.

Konan had turned away and Pein was preparing to follow her, even if he found the puppetry exercise quite captivating, when he caught a glimpse of it - gold, around the teenager's left thumb. A ring. So Pein decided to wait; he wasn't going to let this go, but he wouldn't presume to interrupt an instructional period in which the two occupants of the abode seemed so engrossed.

He told Konan that she could go wherever she wished, which he meant, since he had no hold over her whatsoever. But something in the way she bid him a brief farewell and strode away, her slender hips swaying slightly, made him think she wouldn't stray too far. His heart was remarkably light as he settled down at an unsuspicious distance to await the opportune moment.

It came just a quarter of an hour later, when the elderly woman exited the residence by way of the front door. Pein noticed that she carried only one puppet with her - were the other twenty-odd figurines he'd seen all the work of the teenager? He was impressed, and wary.

He knocked on the door, and its dull beige mass reverberated solidly under his knuckles. It took a few a seconds for the boy to answer, opening up with a small, laid-back smile that revealed just a centimetre of white tooth. "Hello," he said, his thin, reddish lips parting smoothly. He had a lovely voice, like a soft, low breath blowing through a flute. "Are you looking for Chiyo-baa-sama?"

_She's his grandmother, _Pein realized. "I'm not looking for anything." _Except the clues that will help me solve the mystery of myself. _He placed the slightest of emphases on the word 'for'. The teenager seemed aware of it, however. Pein felt a significant spike in his hostility, though the easy smile didn't flicker. "Is there anything I can help you with, then?" he inquired agreeably. He was an exceptional actor, but Pein's ultra-perceptive radar didn't lie.

The burgundy-haired inhabitant had a very personalized Chakra timbre; it was not inordinately powerful, but it somehow had _movement. _It didn't simply circulate - it rolled in continual waves, slowly and steadily, each one strengthening the swell before it.

"I'm looking at that." Pein stared deliberately at the ring on the boy's left thumb.

"What do you know about it?" The sentence came out fast, but still clear and suave. Surprisingly, the hostility escalated no further; apparently, his curiosity outweighed his antagonism. He brushed a straggling lock of mauve hair out of his eyes and reached past Pein to shut the door, his left hand stretching close enough to Pein's face to allow for the kanji on his ring to be identified: the Virgin.

He ushered Pein into the same room he and Chiyo-baa-sama had practiced in earlier, immediately crossing over to the window and drawing the curtain casually. "Something to hide?" Pein inferred.

His host's smile tightened, becoming patronizing, but he kept his tone amiable. "Secrets aren't uncommon."

But Pein's concentration was diverted by the army of lifeless, slack-jawed marionettes occupying the area where bookshelves normally stood; specifically, one of the puppets - the serene girl he had glimpsed from the street. It was impossible, but Pein felt it - Chakra, a Chakra that wasn't his own, nor the teenager's - and it originated from the puppet, a non-living wooden creation. It wasn't a strong scent; it would have been too faint for most shinobi to sense. In fact, now that he focused on it, it seemed more like residual Chakra - traces of weak but functional Chakra that you might find, for example, in a body that had only recently expired.

That didn't explain why you would find active energy inside a _puppet. _

Only one possible reason for this phenomenon came to mind, and it was repugnant - but not revolting enough for Pein to shy away from it. Now, he would test its accuracy. "Who are you?" he asked abruptly.

"I believe it's customary for the unexpected guest to introduce themselves first," the teenager said, tempering the mockery of his voice with a hint of real interest and courtesy. His volatile smile changed again, morphing into a mild smirk. Pein conceded. He had his pride, but he rarely wasted time fighting for it. He came out on top in the end, and that provided ample assurance for his self-esteem. "Pein."

"Sasori. It's a pleasure to meet you." His mellow eyes twinkled with deceitful innocence. His almost-believable sincerity was disconcerting; Pein wondered what kind of twisted soul rested behind that elegant face. Making the unproven assumption that such a thing as a 'soul' existed, of course.

Pein looked at Sasori's ring. "The Virgin…" he mused softly, the puppet-girl swirling into clarity at the edge of his sight. "You killed her."

Sasori absorbed the implications and consequences of the accusation without so much as a blink. "She's a puppet; she's not alive."

"Not anymore," Pein said, pushing a little harder. He was the puppeteer now; pulling and loosening strings, directing the show. He swivelled his gaze to meet Sasori's. Under his unrelenting scrutiny, the redheaded young man's smile straightened into a narrow, prickly line. He moved closer to his puppets as if for protection, which made sense - they were his means of attack and defense, after all. But they were no shield against Pein's powers of deduction.

Finally he said, "She wasn't from here." When no irreversible chain of events seemed to spawn from this declaration, he resumed the confession. "It was nothing more than a test. I knew there had to be a way to make my puppets better and stronger." He let his fingers play along the oiled cheek of an excessively ugly, lethal-looking puppet with clawed hands and malformed fangs. The gentle pats of his nails against the wood were rhythmic and loving, like a pianist's touch on the white and black keys that permitted him to express his most intimate melodies.

"You always want the best for what's yours," Sasori said, his voice a muted whisper of tenderness. It was the first emotion he'd conveyed that was genuine, and its terrifying purity sent a bead of sweat down Pein's back, though he refused to squirm.

Sasori suddenly rose and left the room, with Pein at his heels. His dark red strands of hair swished back and forth across the nape of his neck as he walked outside, fiery pendants forever ticking in honour of their owner's immortal works. But as soon as he stepped onto the hard, gritty earth, their swinging stopped, conveying the lack of breeze and the hot stillness of the atmosphere. Pein inhaled, and grains of sand rubbed on his vocal chords as he swallowed, nestling in the space between artery and skin. He cleared his throat quietly.

Sasori glanced at him and said tranquilly, "It's hard to breathe here." His own ribcage was slowly pulled inward as he sucked in air.

As they strolled side by side, step by step, like old, distant acquaintances making absolutely no effort to kindle any feelings of fellowship, Pein was fascinated to note that he was an inch or two taller than Sasori. "How old are you?" he ventured to ask.

"Nineteen," Sasori replied. He looked much younger even as he spoke the word.

Suna was very spacious, or so it seemed to Pein's eye. The roads weren't straight, neat lanes as he'd come to expect; they often veered sharply, and houses were distributed at random everywhere, some so close together they formed one another's backyards and some so far apart they looked like separate neighbourhoods. It was an odd setup made stranger by the absence of green vegetation - from overhead, the entire land would have resembled a murky yellow tapestry with patches of brown sewn haphazardly on it.

Sasori was detached from the setting - he kept his placid gaze ahead, most likely fixed on their destination. As the homes they passed grew sparser and the sand that littered the ground became a desert wasteland, time crept after the two journeyers, leaving no footprints.

Then they came to a standstill, and Sasori began his story. "It was here. She was here, and so was I - I train far from the village when I'm not with Chiyo-baa-sama...my puppets like their privacy. I had never seen her before, I doubted anyone else had either - she had interesting attributes too, she was perfect...She barely put up any resistance, and I killed her. I had little idea of how to prepare a body for puppetry, but I think it worked rather well. The puppet even kept some of her original skills - it opened up so many possibilities for me." His shadowed topaz eyes glittered.

Pein rearranged the disjointed fragments of Sasori's tale into a logical order and examined the ground carefully. There was no sign of a battle, no memento of an unknown girl who had died, a puppet pulled out of the show for the master's purposes. It was unclear, even to him, whether Sasori was unburdening his guilty conscience or sharing his triumph.

He raised his head, looking to the west, and was greeted by a monumental spectacle. Far on the remote horizon, there resided a vast mountain of brown and grey, and the colours, though pale and dull, were certainly unable to provide any kind of camouflage. It was cut off at its peak, blunt instead of sharp, and every few seconds a gargantuan puff of reddish-orange cloud matter streamed from the cavernous mouth. Jagged cliffs stabbed the smoke-tainted sky all along its steep, pockmarked sides, furious swords of nature defying the boundaries of the universe.

Pein could see why a lone girl searching for meaning would come here, and why a brazen boy who found himself near her would attack and murder her to advance his proficiency. Because when you watched those explosive burps of gas from the colossal, craggy orifice, you could feel nothing but all-consuming ambition. You couldn't think of sin, of heaven or hell, of praying for forgiveness - you could only thirst for power, experience a raging, ravenous hunger to be as immovable as a mountain, as destructive as lava, as deadly and spontaneous as an active volcano.

But there were things you lived for, and then there were things you lived with, whether you liked it or not.

"What was her name?" Pein asked bleakly.

Sasori's answering smile was superior and passively proud. "I didn't ask - there was no reason to. She's now a part of my art; the only name she can be called is 'masterpiece'."

But Pein heard Sasori's dissatisfaction, his irritation at the fact that his greatest work could never hope to match what lay in front of him, many miles ahead.

"Mount Aoyara, located just at the border of Fire country," Sasori said. "It's been active forever." There was longing in his voice as he precisely articulated 'forever' - yearning and jealousy. And Pein knew that this was someone to whom endings meant nothing, and eternity meant everything. It was a daring philosophy.

"And she had the ring?"

"Yes," Sasori answered. "But it wasn't what I killed her for. I took it as an afterthought." _Only when weighed against murder can the theft of valuables be referred to as an 'afterthought', _Pein thought wryly. But he lived in a context where such a situation wasn't rare.

Pein held out his hand, and with a pleasant, indolent smile perfect for fooling grandmothers, Sasori dropped the Virgin into his palm. This further convinced Pein of his initial judgment of character: that Sasori didn't care for fleeting values like money and jewels - his warped love was for long-lasting substance, his own puppets being an example. Unlike Pein, Sasori was a believer in beauty.

Pein didn't flinch when the now-familiar hot tingle scalded his finger as his ring made contact with Sasori's, forging an invisible, immaterial connection between the two. He was bemused at the way the reluctant benefactors of the rings were always, for want of a better word, _dead _before he reached them. It was another of the treacherous world's traps to hold him fast in the chains of fruitless investigation. Or perhaps just chance.

He returned the Virgin to its proprietor, and Sasori turned to face him, his lips slightly stretched and slightly apart, as if he were tasting a dab of sugar, sweet and unhealthy, on the tip of his tongue. "I should kill you," he said, and his voice relished the thought. "You would make a formidable puppet."

The concentric circles in Pein's enigmatic eyes swirled, then returned to focus. "It would be wise to watch that you, and not your greed, remain the master puppeteer," he said diffidently.

Sasori smiled wider, and Zero burned white-hot.

* * *

Pein knew he was dreaming, but he couldn't rationalize how he knew. Perhaps it was because he could not recall ever having a dream before. There had been nightmares, but even those had stopped when his imagination had discovered it could no longer invent anything more daunting than what he'd already experienced, or meant to. 

Things were much more vague than usual; his emotions buzzed on the periphery of his subconscious, present but not quite felt, and he didn't mind his inability to clearly sense anything.

He looked down and saw that he was knee-deep in liquid - it was almost too clear to be water, so transparent that you couldn't even tell it was there unless you were feeling the wetness seep into your skin. It was very mild in temperature, but it sent goose bumps up his legs nevertheless. He extended one finger out to touch the surface of the pool he stood in, and ripples began at the point of convergence. But they weren't simply ripples - they were tremors, shivers causing the fluid to shudder. The faint frisson became a full-fledged shaking, and tidal waves surged around him, splashing and roaring like wild beasts but never spraying him with so much as a drop.

Then suddenly, the raging flood was gone, and in its place stood a giant mound of rock and dust. The light bounced off the tan stone, creating blots of grey and orange discoloration on the mountainside and the surrounding land. It was Mount Aoyara, the very same volcano that Pein had admired that afternoon, but much closer.

Pein reached out to stroke the natural structure, only to hesitate, remembering what the water had done when he'd touched it. But an unseen force shoved him forward, and he staggered into the rock wall. The volcano trembled with all its considerable might under his hands, and he pulled back immediately, but the damage was done, and he could only watch in fascination and fear as the ground supporting his feet cracked and the volcano let out a great bellow of angry steam. This first violent discharge was followed by a tremendous combustion that seemed to toss the entire world around like a fish in an agitated bowl.

Molten lava oozed from the rupture in the volcano's top at a frightening velocity, multiple waterfalls of viscous liquid fire, the blinding reds, yellows and oranges branded into the backs of Pein's eyeballs. Ash filled the air, obscuring the blue sky with a dark, rattling storm. He waited there to be reduced to cinders, obliterated along with everything else. His heart was pounding as if it had only just learned how to beat, and he forgot his terror in his excitement at finally knowing true power.

Then the volcano and all evidence of its wrath vanished, and Pein was left standing in an empty sea of sand. He flicked the desert ground with a finger, expecting another magnificent disaster, but nothing happened.

He straightened slowly, listening to the nearly inaudible sound of sloshing water in the ocean.

* * *

He channelled Chakra to his fingertips, then released it to run a hand through his sleek burgundy hair. The wee hours of the morning were approaching, and he couldn't leave his puppets alone, though his eyes itched for sleep. His gaze swept the room until it fell on the polished, artfully chiselled face of the nameless puppet-girl. He normally spoke to his puppets, and therefore baptized them with identities, but he had never murmured a word to her.

What _had _been her name, anyway?

He walked her over to him, moving her joints with Chakra strings, until she stood in front of him. She was ugly. This realization shocked him - she was one of _his _artworks, and _his _artworks should never be ugly. He stepped closer to her, reached out to caress her cheek.

There was a thud and a crash that made the room tremble, as wooden wreckage flew left and right and slid across the carpet. It was a violent, damaging noise that was like the furious shriek of a threatened cat inside his heart.

Sasori didn't sleep that night; he didn't even lie down. Instead he stayed alert and pensive, plucking splinters out of his hand.

* * *

Pein heard a quiet ripping sound as he dug his fingernails into his bed sheets with just a bit too much vigour, and he automatically disentangled himself from his covers, dangling his toes off the edge of the mattress until they brushed the icy floor. He made as if to flick on the light, then paused and looked over at Konan, who was comfortably bundled up and fast asleep in the next bed. He decided he could tolerate the darkness.

He hunched his shoulders against the chill; Suna, sweltering hot by day, was bitingly cold at night, and his bare arms and feet didn't appreciate the drastic change. And it didn't help that the shabby motel they were staying in redefined the term 'well-aired'.

He flexed his muscles tentatively to prevent them from freezing up, and wondered about the dream. It hadn't been a nightmare, he was sure of that. He had faced death at the hands of the volcano, yes; but he had welcomed it, this proof that it _was _feasible to be so crushingly potent that all of mankind's most awesome deeds paled in comparison. But now that he was awake, he was driven by a desire for meaning. What could such a dream insinuate?

Truth be told, it was not just a desire for _meaning. _It was a desire to achieve a height as impressive as the volcano's, and perhaps the dream held the key.

He crossed over to the window and tossed aside the curtains, the cheap, stiff fabric rustling as it brushed the bumpy wall. He balanced his elbows on the sill, momentarily blinded by the burst of brightness that the outdoors greeted him with.

There was Mount Aoyara, a tiny triangular prism in the corner of the view. And it did indeed resemble a prism, as it reflected the sun's early morning white-gold rays. The volcano was lucky, Pein thought, to stand under such a glorious sunrise. He had been seeing his fair share of daybreaks recently, but this was the first that had ever seemed to blend perfectly with the realm it illuminated. Where the sand was flat and the hills stopped rolling, the sunbeams misting outwards from the shining bronze fog of dawn created its own knoll of light. Where the vivid colour of the sky faded to a drab greyness, the sun filled the unsightly spot with a pale rainbow.

Watching the display, Pein was forced to admit that perhaps beauty could exist, when the right elements combined at the right time.

He positioned his right thumb so that his faithful Zero caught the light and shimmered. His ring had made its own combination, choosing here and there, leading him to its selections. The Black Tortoise, the White Tiger, the Northern Star, the Virgin...it had linked them all, designating them for an existence of more than decoration. It was something new, and it was dawning now.

He recited the word in his head first, but it wasn't complete until he introduced it to the exterior environment. "Akatsuki..." _Dawn. _The start, the establishment of nature's reign over another twenty-four hours in the human kingdom. But this daybreak, this Akatsuki (_his _Akatsuki, his mind supplied), would be no lenient, moderate introduction to fresh innovations, creeping in slowly, cautiously, softly.

It would be an eruption. And it would be beautiful.

* * *

A/N: I actually quite like this chapter. Interesting, lol. 

Sorry, sorry, I know it's a day late. But I did warn you, and I was really trying hard to get a good image of Sasori's character - I read material from several different websites, watched a bit of the anime, just tried to get a sense of what I wanted to portray him as. I hope he seemed in-character. Plus, it's a long chapter. That's good, right?

Comments? Questions? Suggestions? You know where to click. :)


	14. Chapter 14: Surface

Well, I did manage to update this on time - just barely. :)

Gah...I don't know what to title this chapter!

Okay. Okay. Just put something. And there we go. 

* * *

Chapter 14 - Surface

"Pein?"

His coal-like black pupils swivelled in her direction, the only indication of his attention.

"What was the name of that boy we saw through the window?"

Pein didn't bother to contain the sigh that escaped him, his lungs emptying themselves of dusty air in a soft, grating groan. Two days of trekking had passed since they had left Sunagakure, but Konan had had no difficulty in maintaining her curiosity over the 48-hour period. He wasn't sure what was so persistently sparking her interest - the secretive nature of his business? The boy himself? A lack of other conversation topics? Perhaps he could ferret out her motives by leading her to believe he was giving in.

"Sasori," he said. She looked taken aback for a moment, then nodded confidently, her indigo hair swinging turbulently and curling slightly at the tips. "Was he nice?"

"Personality traits are always subjective," Pein answered automatically, puzzling over her mundane question. Now it was her turn to sigh at his obstinate diplomacy, and further specify. "Did you _find _him nice?"

Pein was brutally honest. "No." _Big surprise, _Konan thought, arching her brow. She had an idea that most of Pein's associates hardly fell into the 'nice' category.

Konan's eyes followed the fluffy, erratic path of clouds drifting in the sky. They were undefined in form, but relaxing and calm - their white bulk looked very squeezable, like a cotton-ball stuffed animal she could lay her head on to rest or hug for support. The clouds were benevolent watchers, shapeless, wingless cherubs bringing shade from the fireball of strife and violence that so painfully burned humanity. She was glad of their presence.

"Why did you want to know?" Pein asked, and she was glad of his voice too, and all of the tunes it played, the flats and sharps audible only if you listened for them. It needed no harmony - but she liked to think it just might sound a little better with some.

"Know what?" she inquired. The tranquillity of the present made her reluctant to dwell on the past, however recent it happened to be.

"His name - Sasori." Oh, that; had it been a dialogue or a dream?

"Well, I wondered about him...he was pretty cute." It took her a moment to understand her last comment. Why had she _said _that? One embarrassing interrogation coming up. Or maybe, he'd choose to privately speculate and leave her out of it. His reactions were almost as unpredictable as his actual actions.

No such luck. "Cute," he repeated. The hint of questioning was so faint it could have been a product of Konan's imagination, but she provided an explanation anyway, staring straight ahead and reminding herself that she had surely forgotten how to blush by now.

"Cute - attractive, pleasing to the eye."

"That definition could be applied to 'handsome' too," Pein pointed out. She tried to directly face him, to figure out if he was merely having fun at her expense, but she really couldn't tell.

"Handsome is good-looking - cute is just...cuter." She smiled instead of giving into mortification.

"I suppose you think the concept is self-explanatory." The words themselves were almost derogatory, bordering on contempt, as if knowledge were something to be ridiculed. But his tone was light and not accusatory, and she matched his mood with a quietly jubilant laugh, ringing like an echo from another universe which had far surpassed misfortunes such as poverty and despair. She still wished to know more about what exactly he'd done in the hours he'd spent with this Sasori, but she couldn't ruin the atmosphere. It was like riding on the frail wings of a butterfly, and being blithe and buoyant enough not to weigh down the fragile creature.

The conversation dwindled after that, through a mutual, unexpressed agreement. Konan, who had been just as constrained by society as Pein, though under different circumstances and for altered reasons, was now discovering freedoms she had never guessed the existence of. For example, the liberty of silence - the countless etiquettes of politics and that mystery known as 'common courtesy' made it clear that any moment without talking, listening or otherwise interacting with fellows was a moment wasted. But Pein respected her quiet, welcomed and encouraged it, even. It was an unusual, delicious luxury.

Pein was musing over Konan's remarks. Her most flippant, thoughtless slips of speech were always the most intriguing. They were trivial, but pointless details were important in their own way, and she had brought this to his notice. He hung onto every absentminded comment, hoping for the glimpse of popular culture he had never really been exposed to. The so-called commonplace daily habits of everyday people were often mystifying for him, and he regarded this as an opportunity to catch up on the steps of growing up he'd skipped.

So, Sasori was cute, was he? Pein thought back to the burgundy hair with its carelessly flopping bangs, the indolent eyes, the coy half-smile. He conceded, though the observation was tinged with distaste, that there was a sense of charisma there. It was most likely mainly affiliated with the female sex, however.

He remembered the grey-haired puppeteer, Sasori's grandmother, and felt a tightening in his chest. He didn't claim to know how families operated, but she had seemed to care about him, and perhaps he about her. They had a bond, and it couldn't have been just teacher-pupil. Would he be sorry to leave her without saying good-bye? Would she cry when she found he was gone? Would she think, with bitterness, upon all the choices she had made that could have led him to his departure? This was hypothetical, evidently - maybe he would stay.

No. He wouldn't. A shinobi like Sasori would never be content in Suna. He would want to remain standing and undamaged even after the sand had been swept away.

Pein was nearly relieved that he was deprived of a family. Total strangers had managed to screw up his life enough; people who were close to him could do so much worse - cause deep, repetitive suffering. But the uncertainty of his origins brought its own brand of pain, and victories were so twisted and entangled with obstacles that they could induce depression as well as any defeat.

"Do you miss what you left behind?" he asked suddenly, thinking of Konan's family. She felt a stab somewhere inside, a silver stake poking its tip through wounds not yet entirely repaired. For a minute, she couldn't help but hate Pein's ability to bring solemnity to everything. He was permanently concentrated on the truth, on a quest to put an end to all things elusive. He didn't care for the fireworks that dazzled the night; he strained to see the stars beyond them.

He saw the peaceful candlelight in her eyes dim to the shadow of a flame and wished he knew how to rephrase the question so it wouldn't hurt either of them. But he wasn't that eloquent, and she answered anyway. "Yes, I do. I guess it's natural. Those were people, places, things that were alive, and they're hard to forget. And when you don't have a choice, it's bad. But Hanzo was wrong, and if I can get stronger, I'll be able to prove it." The regret was there, but when tossed in the salad of her past, it was just the rotten leaf at the bottom of the bowl. The resolve, on the other hand, was the surge of taste behind each bite.

He didn't know many of the minutiae of Hanzo's reign, but he'd gathered from Konan that he had some leadership issues. Personally, he was apathetic to Rain's potential doom, but he understood that she didn't feel the same way, and he respected her right to fight for what was important to her. "That's a worthwhile goal." It was, too - Pein recognized it. She was much more driven and productive than he; while he dipped in and out of various thought patterns without translating them into a course of action, she was crouched in a fighting stance, an avenging, trail-blazing angel.

She smiled again, and rays of sunlight melted into the dark waves of her loose hair, leaving sparkles dancing across their blueness. "I kind of made it up on the spot," she confessed, but it wasn't entirely true. She had never put it into words before, even in her mind, but she knew it was what she'd been working towards since she'd left Amegakure.

Pein was surprised, but not disappointed. He glanced at the ring encircling her white finger, imagining the elegant curved fangs of the powerful, sinewy tigresses that dominated the jungle, striking ferociously and efficiently without warning, stripping away the meat, then slinking away unobtrusively, leaving nature to profit from the ravaged carcass of their prey.

Her joy was radiant but fierce, pouncing on the magnificent aspects of life with the purest, most primitive of intentions - to love.

* * *

She grimaced as the water lapped against the tender pink skin between the black stubbly hairs on her legs. How this dull olive-green lake had retained the frozenness of winter amidst the steamy warmth of the afternoon was beyond her knowledge - she could almost feel ice chips floating around in the sluggish liquid that was mottling her ankles with bruise-like tattoos of cold.

Pein was scrutinizing the trees from the grassy bank, his cloak discarded and neatly folded on the ground beside him. She could make out the blackened stain in the fabric that he had never washed off. He was only a couple of metres away...within perfect range...but did she dare?

He was standing guard, not because of paranoia but rather due to a general dislike of surprises, when he felt several icy grazes on his cheek. Not deep enough to be kunai, not shallow enough to be a breeze, and damp.

He turned back, startled, to see Konan laughing at him, her fingers dripping. She stepped out of the water, wiggling her toes to get the circulation flowing. "Sorry, I couldn't resist," she said, any sincerity her apology might have included toppled by the mirth in her voice. She reached up to sweep the moisture from his face, and her hand was even colder than the water droplets. Her touch seemed not to stop at the skin, penetrating his veins and cells as well, and though it was a businesslike brush, to him it was so intimate that it hurt. He thought for sure her fingerprints were stamped on his features forever, corroding his flesh like a hot iron, and he bore the pain for as long as he could. Finally, when he could stand it no more, he prepared to thrust her away, but she beat him to it, and the agony was gone.

He forced himself to meet her eyes, afraid that if he didn't now he never would again. Her heavy-lidded gaze was playful, unsuspecting of his turmoil. He wanted to scold her, or maybe thank her, for putting him through that, but he could only add another item to his list of unvoiced emotions.

She rolled down her robe as her shivering legs dried in the sun, peering over her shoulder as she knelt. Then she straightened hurriedly, her smile vanishing. Pein noticed the sudden tension in her neck, the rebellious rise in her cheekbones, the jutting out of her prominent chin. A nimble spin of the heel revealed the cause of her defensiveness, separated from them by the expanse of the lake but unmistakably a threat.

He wore a rash, swaggering grin that stopped just a centimetre away from his protruding, accented jaw line. His face was a pale, doughy grey colour tinged with shades of blue, and below his round white eyes were marked three dark gills. His dark, blue-black hair shot upwards like a sleek geyser, held in place by a forehead protector decorated with four small squiggles, two on top, two below. All in all, the effect was, to some extent, fishy - pardoning the pun. Pein rapidly multitasked, noting the uncanny resemblance to a shark, consulting his learning of village symbols (_ah, it was the hidden village of Mist's sign), _and figuring out why he hadn't sensed the man's Chakra.

Then he knew - this Chakra blended so perfectly with the lake alongside it that it was nearly impossible to detect. It felt like a current of water, streaming strongly and continually renewing itself. This relation of a bodily function to a natural element fascinated Pein, and he examined the man more closely. He was big and strapping, which was likely necessary, as he carried an enormous sword on his back. Oddly, it was wrapped in what looked like bandages - a mummy-weapon, flat and rounded at the tip.

The Mist ninja swung his wicked-looking cleaver down and around his midsection, a muffled hum buzzing along the eardrums of his listeners as he carved the air. Pein, who had at some point recalled that Mist nins were often superb water users, became aware of their hazardous proximity to the lagoon, and moved back. Konan followed his lead, retreating not an inch further than he had. She stood firmly beside him, knees bent, adrenaline crackling in her aura.

The huge blade sunk into the water, the shark-man's callous greyish hands gripping the hilt tightly. He seemed to be channelling Chakra through the sword into the lake - tendrils of electric blue Chakra jumped from his blade and twisted across the water, skimming and sparking like lightning bolts. Pein and Konan waited with bated breaths for the confrontation to begin, but none came. Eventually the Mist nin repositioned his weapon in its strap, and he guffawed boomingly as the criss-crossing undulations of Chakra flashed out of existence.

"Was all that just him _showing off_?" Konan demanded disbelievingly.

The Mist shinobi was now regarding them appraisingly, his pointy, triangular teeth gnashing against each other in a beastly grin. "Sorry, did I scare you?" he called mockingly, his voice loud and guttural. "I just had an urge to let it out."

A whiny drawl responded as another figure stepped out of the forest to halt behind the blue-skinned man. "Kisame-san," he complained, "if you've killed yet another passer-by, I'm not going to help you dispose of the body."

"Raiga," the shark-nin replied, his tone lowering in annoyance, "if you don't shut up, I'll ditch you. Which I'll probably do anyway. You're useless at fighting and your comebacks suck." Raiga's lip curled, but he kept his temper. He obviously didn't want to incur this lively Kisame-san's wrath, and he did look rather insignificant next to his companion's sheer brawn. He himself was lean and fit, but his murky, abyss-like eyes were watery and void, his long greenish-black hair was greasy, and he had a weak, angular chin. His weapons of choice appeared to be two silver prongs, and he didn't wear a forehead protector.

Pein and Konan still hadn't spoken a word, Pein because he was quite content to be an observer and Konan because, sensibly, she was trying not to jeopardize Pein's plans (whatever they might be). The one named Kisame seemed interested in hearing their opinion, however, as he dived headfirst into the lake. For just a second, he was completely submerged, and a blurred outline was visible under the surface, gliding so smoothly that not a single ripple showed. Then he was climbing out in front of the two outcasts, his hair slicked back. The gigantic sword looked light as a feather on his back as he rose easily to his feet, his tongue sneaking out to lick the wetness around his mouth.

He strained his chest muscles, invigorated and craving motion, and Pein admired his open, unabashed vulgarity. "You possess a unique blade," he complimented.

Kisame grunted with pride. "Got that right. This baby Samehada isn't just any bloodsucker." He reached towards the rear to pat his 'baby' with satisfaction.

Raiga had taken the long route, walking round the lake rather than swimming through it. Now he joined the rest of the group, falling a step behind Kisame and eyeing Pein and Konan with ill-concealed distrust and nervosity. "You're not going to kill them?" he asked incredulously. Apparently, if the reckless, dangerous shark-nin didn't attack someone within the first couple of minutes of meeting them, they were safe - somewhat.

"You're pretty boring company all by yourself, Raiga," Kisame said with a slightly deranged smirk. "I say we go with this guy and his girl, just for variety. Which way are you heading, anyway?"

Konan bristled - she didn't like the possessive 'his' Kisame had used. _Ugly, sexist fish ninja, _she fumed. And she didn't particularly want to drag this arrogant, impetuous hulk along as a traveling companion, either. But Pein had his own agenda. "Southeast," he said.

"Sounds good," Kisame said roguishly. "Now, I won't pretend I'm polite or that I actually care who _you _are, but you may as well know me as Hoshigaki Kisame." He didn't try for a handshake, but the rudeness was so inherent for him that it almost lessened the offense.

"Pein," Pein promoted the introduction.

"Konan," Konan disclosed stiffly.

Raiga excluded himself from the proceedings until Kisame purposely shifted to the side so that Samehada's wide hilt jabbed Raiga's thigh. The smaller man winced and muttered morosely, "Raiga."

Without further ado, Kisame turned smartly and set off in a precisely southeast direction. Konan, determined not to let him get ahead, caught up with him and maintained his pace, her posture carefully erect, brushing her hair behind her ear briskly. Pein, lounging back next to Raiga, watched the two with an amused, knowing eye, like a well-informed audience member who was familiar with the ending of the play but still waited with controlled eagerness for the curtain to go up.

Hoshigaki Kisame, a new factor in the equation. It remained to be seen if he had any real value. Pein thought so; he would not have extended the invitation otherwise, or allowed Kisame to accept it.

He had an inkling that any monotony this journey might have exhibited had just become shark food.

* * *

A/N: That beginning part with the 'Cute vs. Handsome' incident was just me amusing myself - it was pretty fun. :P I figured it was about time for some mindless hints of fluff, especially since last chapter I basically traded all of Konan's spotlight for Sasori. Gave me some good metaphor opportunities, too - I love those, even though I agonize over them forever.

If any of you watched some of the anime fillers, you may have recognized Raiga. He was one of the Seven Shinobi Swordsmen of the Mist, like Kisame, so I decided to include him. I characterized him the way I wanted, though.

The last line is a product of my randomness and my need to tie everything in with something that relates to the events of the chapter. Once again, it was just fun. Thanks all!


	15. Chapter 15: Hunter

It's on time, and at a reasonable hour of day! Impressive, eh? lol. Anyway, thanks for the mountains of support (upon whose peaks I sit, inspired as I watch the lovely view) and I hope the chapter is enjoyed by all. 

* * *

Chapter 15 - Hunter

The sky was one huge cloud. Over the past hour, a dark, treacherous grey had steadily replaced the cheery blue above, stealthily skulking in masses, frowning soldiers materializing from their trenches for an ambush. They swiftly overpowered their clear, sundrenched adversaries, serving their cause with grim zeal. _That's one way of winning a war, I suppose, _Pein thought as he watched the battle play out.

Surprisingly for someone so pessimistic, Raiga seemed to appreciate the strategy and majesty of the impending squall as well. "It's going to storm soon," he said spiritedly, vigour entering his toneless drawl.

Kisame never smiled - he sneered, in a nefariously jovial way. There really was a great deal of animal in him, in the way his thin lips curled over his shark-like teeth, the way the skin at the bridge of his nose folded fiercely in on itself with each change of expression. He did nothing to hide this brutishness, seeming to revel in the freedom it gave him to hunt, kill and maim. If he had ever had problems reconciling his human traits with his inborn aquatic instincts, he bore no outward traces of a struggle now. But he must have suffered, somehow - humankind had no sense of acceptance.

"Perfect time for a practice session, eh, Raiga?" the marine male said with a garish grin. Konan, beating around the bush not being a habit of hers, asked sharply, "What are you talking about?"

The stray sighs of wind that rustled in the forest gathered into one wild howl, lifting Raiga's hair and whipping a light into his eyes. "I manipulate Chakra in the form of lightning bolts," he explained, and his voice, though reedy, reverberated with pride. "I use thunderstorms as cover whenever I can."

"You won't see _me _waiting for a tsunami to train my techniques," Kisame interjected. Konan smiled - she had to admit, he grew on you.

Pein was compelled to put a damper on the affable ambience, vibrations seeping through the pads of his feet as the first peal of thunder rang out. Although it rumbled far up in the sky, the earth's crust trembled under its might. "No," he objected. "You cannot train tonight. We are too close to Konoha, and atmospheric disturbances might be sensed by their higher-ranked shinobi."

Raiga's face switched from enthusiasm to discontent in a nanosecond, his thin nostrils flaring, and he stepped towards Pein. He was like lightning, flashing warning signs before inflicting damage, but Pein was unyielding and untouchable as thunder, waiting for the bolt to strike and ready to shake the world with an international tremor of fear if need be.

"I won't take the risk," Pein stated calmly. Raiga deferred, his opposition crumbling as he succumbed to the pressure Pein's level gaze exerted on him. Resentment made his features harden like a statue whose sculptor had overdone the facial lines.

Kisame exhaled in a puff of quiet, contemplative mirth. "That was an interesting confrontation," he muttered. He stared at Raiga's hunched back as if noticing the spine for the first time.

"Yes." The word came out more fervently than Konan had expected. She realized, with no small chagrin, that she could hardly claim to know more about her illustrious companion than the hunk of mixed shark, human and newcomer at her side did. Pein was always on border patrol, enforcing endless policies of barriers and obstructions. She had one question: _where the heck were you supposed to get a passport??_

Shifting Samehada into a more secure position and wearying of the tension, Kisame said, "I'm off to hunt."

"I trust your game is beast only," was Pein's swift comment, delivered with equal parts shrewdness and authority. Kisame managed to look annoyed and appreciative at the same time, turning away with a hint of white showing in his grimace. Pein wasn't satisfied with the silence, and he departed after the shark-nin, tossing back over his shoulder, "Get to know each other."

Raiga's jaw lifted in distaste, and he groused, "And I'm stuck with the mediocre female sidekick."

Konan glared freezingly. "Say that again and I'll draw some mediocre knife artwork on your face," she said, and meant it.

* * *

"Are you my babysitter?" Kisame asked sarcastically as Pein matched his pace.

"No, merely a concerned observer whose motives are shrouded in self-interest," Pein retorted with identical dryness. Kisame grinned and increased his speed, loping heavily as the trees whirred by. Pein kept up, occasionally ducking his neck to the side to avoid being scratched by overhanging foliage.

"Is Raiga from Kirigakure as well?" Pein asked conversationally.

Kisame shot him a sideways glance but answered openly enough. "Yeah, we're two of the Seven Shinobi Swordsmen of the Mist - the elite." Pein filed the term away for future investigation.

"So you were friends." Pein spoke the line precisely because he knew it wasn't quite right - people were always more willing to talk when they thought they were correcting you.

"No." Kisame started with a simple, savage negative. "We worked together sometimes because it was protocol, but he was the only one of the seven who was ever interested in partnership. At that level, you have to be on your own, and it's better that way." He stopped, and they travelled in silence for a few moments.

"Raiga's too good to be a wannabe, but he's not good enough to be the best. I don't know exactly why he followed me when I left - he could have made it back there, maybe." Kisame paused, then snorted. "Yeah, he was an island boy, not an outside-world kind of guy. Stupid."

"You're not, as you put it, an 'island boy' then." Pein tried to consider all the reasons Kisame could have called Raiga 'stupid' - the framework behind his statement was unclear. Despite his derogatory remarks, he didn't seem to harbour any genuine enmity towards his associate.

Kisame's small, round eyes flickered. "Hell no," he said, but his tone lacked the usual vim that accompanied his uncouth assertions.

Pein decided he had wrung enough information out of the man for one evening and closed his mouth, respecting what was left of his privacy. He wondered what had befallen Kisame in his land, and if it had at all resembled the biases he'd been a victim to. Perhaps there was more to Raiga's desertion than he thought - a sense of wrongness?

Kisame's habitual mood of genial, light menace was gone, and sodden curtains seemed to dangle over his expression. Pein hoped he hadn't destroyed some fragile fragment of Kisame's core, because, all of a sudden, the concept that a robust, tough-skinned missing-nin could have brittle, breakable components didn't appear laughable. There was a delicate art to achieving interrogation without prying, and Pein didn't think he'd completely mastered it yet.

They progressed in silence, the aura overcast on both ends, until Kisame abruptly halted, stiffening from animation to immobilization. "The hunt starts now," he divulged in a rough hiss. Pein nodded brusquely, delegating the leadership role to the Mist nin for this particular task. He knew he was outclassed in this field - he was only just now sensing the presence of another organism in the vicinity.

They trod wordlessly through the thicket, balancing their weight carefully on the ground to minimize noise and vigilantly curving around the shrubs that surged upwards in their path. Presently they spotted a slender, pale doe, feeding tranquilly behind a tree trunk. White rosettes dotted her arched back like silky snowflakes, and her ears pricked forward as she chewed daintily. Every so often, as the horizon ignited with a violent light and thunder boomed out, a quiver would run through her bony, rickety legs.

Pein regulated his breathing so that it corresponded with Kisame's slow, clandestine rhythm and blended into nature's ordinary tintinnabulations. Kisame was absolutely still for a minute, and then he lunged powerfully at his prey, brandishing Samehada in an effortless arc. Pein watched the blade, riveted, as it removed the fur from the deer's throat, its bandages unwrapping as it thrust. Crimson dripped down the animal's neck, frothing in its mouth as it convulsed briefly, shuddering its way into death as the storm seethed in the background, the lines between finesse and brutality blurring with the first sprinkles of rain from the melancholy heavens.

He replayed the sequence in his mind, the way the hair and tissue had seemed to peel off, spreading the razor-like injury over a larger area. That wasn't slicing, cutting or stabbing - that was _shaving. _

Kisame lifted the fresh, bleeding carcass with one arm and slung it over his shoulder, saying seriously, "Samehada never fails the hunter." It was an image Pein would have wished to paint, if he had been that type of artist - the darks and lights of the leaves, grass and lightning-ravaged sky, the precise shading and bold contours of the victorious swordsman's face, the shocking detail in the doe's open, salivating jowls and its panicked, glazed eyes.

"An accomplished kill," Pein commented, though the adjective was ambiguous - whether it was defined as praise or insult depended on the listening ear.

Kisame's grin was fierce. "Should be enough meat for our little band," he said, seizing up the deer's proportions. "Raiga can starve if it comes down to that." He could possibly have been joking.

They set off on the return journey, sodden already, cloaks glistening with droplets of moonshine-tainted water. The tempest snarled into their backs, fangs dripping with the blood of the elements. Pein said nothing, struggling to delineate the feelings he needed to puzzle out before suppressing. He had an idea that few people had ever been permitted to share the experience of the hunt with Kisame. Raiga, at least, didn't seem to be one of the privileged.

"Maybe Raiga chose to be a wannabe," Pein blurted suddenly, though his tone was too reserved for 'blurt' to be an accurate adjective.

"Why would he make a choice like that?" Kisame demanded, bemused.

_It's better than working yourself to death only to fall into second place, _Pein thought. _It's better than spending your youth climbing a ladder, hands blistering from the effort, just to realize it doesn't extend all the way to the roof._ _It's better than living up to the potential that will always be 'almost' and 'not quite'. _

When you couldn't reach the top, it didn't make a difference how much less you settled for. What mattered was your capacity for failure, and how many times you were willing to let the tidal waves dash you against the rocks, how many beaches you could wash up on before limping bitterly inland.

The rain pounded, the thunder crashed, the lightning sparked, and the birds sang, somewhere in the midst of the clamour.

* * *

"So who wants to volunteer for gut duty?" Kisame asked, dumping the tender cadaver onto the dirt. He pronounced the last two words with enough relish to incite Konan's curiosity, and she accepted the challenge. What followed was a lengthy, comprehensive lesson on the lesser-known aspects of the anatomy of a deer, which Konan stoically sifted through with kunai and bare, sticky fingers.

After the first half-hour of spew and labour, a moderately impressed Kisame remarked, "I'll say this much for you, you're not squeamish."

"You're not implying any gender-induced incredulity, are you?" Konan inquired critically, raising an eyebrow. "Because, I'll have you know, I could out-gut a man any day." Kisame, snickering, flicked a morsel of intestine onto her cheek, which she casually brushed away without a single squeal. Pein, acting the part of highly amused onlooker, blew out a medium-sized fireball to set their tinder ablaze, while Raiga sulked, staring bleakly at his missed lightning opportunities.

Pein felt strange, unfamiliar stirrings as he watched them interact. Kisame was dynamic but professional, unfazed by the animal innards strewn all over his lap - he was relaxed, enjoying the product of his hunt. And Konan was biting back her expressions of repugnance, determined to make use of every chance to prove herself, and finding the competition most rewarding. How did they bring out these traits in one another? What mysterious incantations were these trivial sentences that cast a new light on every personality?

He was engulfed in a deep wistfulness, the flames flickering in front of him, which lasted until Kisame gave a grunt of disbelief, digging into what appeared to be a section of stomach and unearthing some kind of thin, golden ornament.

"What's that?" Konan and Pein asked simultaneously, too focused on Kisame's catch to pay any attention to their unintentional unison. Raiga glanced their way disinterestedly, then returned to his previous activity - namely, moping.

Kisame held it up to his eye and pronounced, "A ring." He snorted. "Fancy that - finding a ring in a deer's guts." He noticed the pair glancing furtively down at their own rings, and asked, "Are yours the same?"

"They may be," Pein said evenly, hiding his excitement as Kisame handed him the trinket for scrutiny. The shock was minimal when he saw that distinctive kanji style, and its ever-cryptic inscription, 'Southern Star'. Hadn't that Waterfall-nin, Kakuzu, possessed the Northern Star? Such connections couldn't be mere coincidences...he didn't _think _so, anyway...

This time, his Zero didn't even need to make contact with the novice. As he rotated his palm and the Southern Star rolled towards his own ring, his skin ignited with a sizzle of heat that fleetingly fried the tendons in his hand. He frowned as he returned the Southern Star to Kisame, who shrugged off the mystery and placed the object around his calloused finger. Unsure of the reason behind the ring's premature activation, Pein cogitated and swirled his theories in a simmering brew of a myriad of ingredients. Perhaps the collection of rings was nearing some power source which concentrated their strange enchantment, some location, their place of origin perchance -

Konoha. Konoha, whose fabled gates stood just past the borders of this woodland, on the brink of the gale.

Maybe he was closer to an answer than he'd thought.

* * *

Consciousness rushed to Pein's being like a bucket of water splashed over his face, trickling down his ear passages and sloshing into his brain. A heady, slightly pungent scent had pervaded his nose, and he realized that it was the fragrance of Konan's hair, the blue tresses resting gently on the damp ground. It was a mixture of fresh pulp and more, bringing to mind a vague reminder of paper. Surmising that it wasn't the smell that had woken him, he propped himself up on his elbows.

A figure was disappearing into the trees - certainly not Konan, and much too trim for Kisame. A quick appraising of their makeshift camp and its sleepers confirmed it as Raiga, and Pein had to silently applaud him for his ability to get so far in his exit before alerting somebody to his movements. Pein had years of training in sleeping lightly.

He sprang noiselessly to his feet, stabilizing his balance as he waited for his circulation to adjust to the abrupt change in stance and for the rich helping of venison he'd eaten as an evening meal to settle. He slipped into the woods in pursuit of the fugitive, careful not to tread in the meek slivers of moonlight that might reveal his presence. The storm seemed to have passed, and the subsequent silence was peaceful and eerie, like the short pause between the strangled breaths of a sprinter.

He quickened his pace, hoping to apprehend Raiga before becoming hopelessly lost, and succeeding as a rippling shadow gave away his target's course, just a few metres ahead. With a running leap and a boost from his strong calves, he projected himself into the air, landing in Raiga's path.

Raiga's ninja reflexes were only just enough to prevent him from careening into Pein, as he skidded to a stop, their bodies inches apart. Raiga stepped backward. Pein took two steps forward, desiring an effect of intimidation.

"What - what do you want?" Raiga was clearly shaken, cornered with the hunter's sights on him.

"One conversation," Pein replied. "I assume it will be our last."

A muscle jumped in Raiga's cheekbone as he wavered between hopeand fear. His strenuous inhaling gave the impression that he had been running for a very long period, and he moistened his lips with drying saliva.

"Why are you leaving?"

Raiga made the amateurish mistake of casting a look behind him, but fortunately Pein didn't use it against him. "I...I don't want to be Kisame-san's scapegoat forever," he said nervously, but honestly, Pein opinionated. "There may not be anything much better out there, but there could be...something..." His eyes roved over his interrogator's face and he finished with what sounded more like a plea than a statement. "I've - I've got to stop wasting time!"

Since Raiga was nearing a convulsive state, Pein gave him his space by moving back. By his jumpy demeanour, Pein deduced that he must have either been planning this for months, his sense of dread growing all the while, or made a spontaneous decision which had badly jolted his nerves. It wasn't part of the need-to-know basis, tough, so he skipped that question.

"Why are you afraid of me?" he asked directly. It was something he'd longed to ask many people he'd come across, but perhaps this one reply could give him at least some small amount of insight.

Raiga, who was making a valiant exertion to calm himself, said somewhat more steadily, "You're...like Kisame, only more of everything that makes him..." He hesitated, looking as if he wished he'd voiced it in a different manner, but the sternly expectant crease in Pein's brow told him there was no going back.

"...inhuman."

Pein suddenly wanted to shove him, hard, and feel that fast-beating heart flatten into pulp under his fists, avenging an observation which he himself had forced but not wanted to hear. Instead he slid out of the way and deadpanned, "Go."

Raiga's relief was a tangible flavour, but it tasted of acid on Pein's tongue, and when he swallowed, it oozed into his soul and made its burn marks there. He watched Kisame's no-longer partner scamper off into the brush, believing, at least, that he was free. His naiveté would live on until the next time a kunai brushed his throat, when it would spiral into nothingness with all the colours of greyscale, and he would escape again. From jail to jail, Raiga would go, and then become jailer, if Fate decreed that his cruelty was adequate.

_Inhuman. _Raiga's cruelty was abundant already.

He walked back to camp, hugging the unlit areas with even more care than he'd exercised when concealment had been necessary. He sat, cross-legged, by Konan's slumbering form, his disjointed thoughts aggravating the sting rather than easing it. He wasn't too preoccupied, however, to notice when Kisame stirred and asked, his tone even more gruff than usual, "Raiga's gone, is he?"

"It seems so," Pein replied, his composure as undisturbed as ever.

"He always had loyalty issues," Kisame commented, and Pein detected no regret, only derision. Raiga was right about Kisame - he _was _inhuman, on many levels. He knew Raiga was right about him, too. 'Human' was so much more than just a race - it was an assembly whose members, though diverse, were selected for certain qualities. The rings were inhuman matter - perhaps they were attracted to people who shared that peculiarity in some way.

But Konan had a ring, and she was a woman, a kunoichi, and well human. Although, she did stay with him - that had to count for something.

"It doesn't matter," Pein spoke out loud, trying to convince himself.

"Is apathy generally your last resort, or your first option?" Kisame said, barking a laugh.

Pein acknowledged the jibe with good grace. "Both. Neither."

"Doesn't matter anyway, after all," Kisame rejoined. Pein found himself appreciative of the fact that Kisame preferred to butt in rather than hear the beginning of the discussion. Conveniently, with the shark-nin it was also unnecessary to finish the banter, so Pein rolled over onto his side, his temple encountering a bed of thistles. He had no way of seeing Kisame's snarky grin from his angle, but it was plainly there, its presence optimistic if not quite sunny. A shred of anticipation was torn from the corner of Pein's stapled, dust-covered page of sensations, and he grasped at it with eager, starved hands, sniffing the loopy print in its black spattery ink - and it smelled a bit like leaves drizzled with rain, and a lot like Konan's hair.

Tomorrow, the hunt commenced.

* * *

A/N: I have a few author notes I would like to insert here...but I'm in a hurry to get off... so, bye! Thank you! 


	16. Chapter 16: Innocence

It's only, um...seven days late? Heheh...sorry! Hopefully a longer-than-usual chapter is as good a way to beg forgiveness as any. 

* * *

Chapter 16 - Innocence

They skipped breakfast, which Pein registered not out of hunger but out of a habit of noticing things. He had always recognized the importance of food, and understood that he owed enough to his mind and body that he should fuel them. But beyond that, he held victuals in no particularly high esteem. They were tools, used to coax a human system into full functionality. Some tasted better than others, he admitted - but as long as they did their job, he was satisfied.

Konan was systematically combing twigs out of her scalp, unflinching as her fingers dragged through snarled entanglements of leaves and hair. Finally, tiring of the exercise, she let the tresses fall over the nape of her neck. There was a fragment of stem sticking out behind her ear, and Pein itched to snatch it out, instinctively disapproving of anything that marred her in the slightest. But touch, skin on skin or heart on heart, was a contract he had not signed.

"How do we mean to get into Konoha?" Kisame asked. He stood next to a thick young tree but did not lean on it, and betrayed no sign of disquiet. "They'll have upped security since the Kyuubi attack."

"The one that took place seven or so years ago?" Konan turned towards him, curious. Pein was silent, but he wouldn't have minded hearing more either. Seven years ago, he had still been living in Amegakure, which was a secluded, introverted village. It hadn't had a strong connection to the outside world, and as a result the news its inhabitants received was sketchy at best.

He remembered that summer of his tenth year, when he stood awkwardly by the swing set, feeling too tall, too alone, too strange, and not quite ready to actually swing. He'd stepped forwards, just to test the rubber, when a sudden violent tremor had shaken the earth, followed by a shockwave of vicious, sinister energy that had made the entire landscape waver like transparent steam. It was only the first in a succession of spine-cracking vibrations accompanied by that dark surge of power, and though he didn't believe in omens, he had never tried to mount the swing set again. He hadn't been able to uncover much information on the Kyuubi, which he resented; it was reasonable to want to know exactly what could cause you to scrape your knees on playground gravel from leagues away.

"Yes - the Kyuubi, one of those tailed Bijuu. I hear they're still repairing the damage it caused," Kisame said callously. Konan shot him a look that told him what she thought of his lack of empathy, then pursued Pein, who had set off already.

"Whatever obstacles present themselves, I can take care of them," Pein assured her before she could start. "We'll infiltrate Konoha without difficulty."

Konan scoffed, but it was a snort of laughter, not of contempt. "_Infiltrate? _You make it sound like some kind of war espionage." She stopped before her mirth could reach its full potential, however - something about Pein's current mood, or lack thereof, made her unsure of how far to take a joke. 'Just kidding', she felt, were not words that were okay to say to Pein, ever.

She wasn't looking at him, and the back of her neck was in front of him, and that piece of twig was still poking out. He wrestled with himself for about half of a split second, then leaned in just a centimetre closer. He gathered air in the niche between his teeth and the inward side of his lips, then blew it out softly, his light exhalation meeting resistance in the form of the splinter. It tipped and spiralled to the ground, replaced by a few upturned sapphire-coloured hairs. It was an improvement, and he felt somehow that he'd compensated for whatever other deteriorations he might have ignored.

"You never know," he replied unfathomably. "Anything can lead to war." _And everything ends up being a weapon, and nothing goes unscathed._

Konan glanced over at him, biting her lip as she tried to make her face as expressionless as his, and felt a shadow cloak her like a wet towel as his cynicism rang out, louder and clearer than any other verbal message. If only he would _show _suffering, if only she could somehow _help... _if only he could have been a normal, happy boy with a family, if only she could have stayed a normal, happy girl with a home, if only peace could reign forever. So many burdens were carried, and never equally distributed.

She shook off the rags of despondence, determined to leave his personal philosophies intact and not undermine them with her young, girlish wishes. She imagined, and hoped, that when no one was watching, he let himself crumple just a little. A paper with no folds in it was...blank. There was no way to set the bird soaring when you could not shape the first wing.

She looked away, because right now, she could only be close to him from a distance.

* * *

_The sky is dark, but he only notices it in passing - it simply acts as a dull, uninspired backdrop to the overwhelming colour and action in front of it. With the slashes of blackish-blue, it could be interpreted as a storm, though it is only nightfall. But all thoughts of night or day are pushed aside as the question of life or death becomes imminent. _

_He is running, but not as quickly as he could have been, because he is busy craning his neck backwards. Tentacles of dark orange flay the horizon like thick whips, coiled and twitching viciously at brave men in green vests with scarred faces and soon-to-be scarred bodies. Fifty souls are extinguished with one lash, and a thousand screams echo in its wake, some in anguish, some in pain, but all in fear. He makes the distinction between the three emotions, but feels none of them himself._

_Even from so far away, he can see the sly brown orb of the beast's eye, the slavering shine in the fox's jaws, and it is more real than anything he has ever seen before. He knows he will remember this vision long after he has forgotten the faces of his family. _

_His family - his mother runs beside him, her eyes wide and her face flushed over its pallor. It is the first time he has seen her hair so wild and tangled, its perfect order gone. In her arms she bears a tiny body swathed in blankets, its minuscule chest rising under the layers, a white, scrunched-up face visible through an opening in the covers. Its mouth is open, bawling with all its might, but though he strains to hear it, its voice is not strong enough to compete with the blasting din all around. _

_His mother extends one hand, but he does not take it. He understands that he is young and she does not want to lose him, but he knows his way. _

_He looks back again and a strand of black hair drapes itself over his eyelid, but he shakes it away and tries to find the well-built, steady outline of his father among the other ninja. He recalls the brief sensation of his father's fingers lightly gripping his shoulder, and then his mother hugging her husband tightly and stroking the lines on his face, before he vanished through the door. His father rarely touched anybody that way, and he knew it must be important. He was fighting now._

_He suddenly realizes that he has stopped moving, is no longer pounding the ground and sending up clouds of dust. Now he stands, alone and very still, with a multitude of people hurtling past him. The animal flails in the distance, its snarls keening in the air, and he knows someone is losing. He guesses that it is not his father - his father is an Uchiha, and not allowed to lose. _

_He looks to the right and to the left, not seeing his mother or baby brother, and figures out that he is lost._

_He is searching for landmarks, calculating his location and mapping out the quickest path to the evacuation site, ignoring the tumult around him, when he hears his mother's cry, its terror overpowering even the bellows of war for a moment. "Itachi!"

* * *

_

He awoke, and the dream was still with him. It wasn't quite a dream, though, nor a nightmare - it was a memory, recurrent even after nearly seven years. It was a very vivid scene; everything was just as clear as it had been when he'd actually lived through it, except for one thing: he felt no emotions during the dream. His thoughts were there, but no feeling, none at all. He couldn't remember whether he'd been afraid, curious, confused, or anything else. Maybe he was looking for something that wasn't there.

It always stopped immediately and abruptly after his mother's panicked call. This annoyed him, because he was certain he must have felt something upon hearing her voice, and yet it eluded him.

He was swinging his legs over the edge of his mattress when his door opened. It creaked, because he was careful to neglect the oiling of his hinges. If someone was entering his room, he wanted to be aware of it.

"Itachi." It was his father's voice, deep and definite as always - the vocal embodiment of tradition and authority. Itachi slid off his bed to stand, back ramrod-straight, neck stiff, and bowed to acknowledge the leader of the clan, and his parent. As required by etiquette, he did not raise his head until his father's releasing statement. "You're already awake."

"Yes," Itachi said, because he could not ignore his father's words. "Otou-san, about the Nine-Tailed Kitsune's attack on Konoha seven years ago..." he trailed off, but it didn't matter, as his father cut in sharply.

"What, Itachi?" It was a command, not a question, and Itachi realized that he had relinquished control of this conversation before it had even started. This morning, he did not want to be directed, and he withdrew.

"I was remembering it. It is of no great importance." He hated this feeling of being forced to lie. These days, it seemed that his tongue and his mind worked on different frequencies; his tongue broadcast all the commercials, while his mind played the songs, and neither had any listeners.

His father watched him, but nothing was discernible from his son's poker face. "Very well, then. You have a mission today. Wake your brother and come downstairs." He turned and left, and Itachi turned and didn't. He retrieved his ANBU uniform from a drawer and slipped it on, reflecting on how obvious his father's priorities were, even to a casual observer who paid the slightest attention to dialogue.

His abdomen tightened under the constricting white vest, and he took several measured breaths to loosen them while he stretched the black elastic material of his gauntlets up past his elbows. When the hard metal armguards were pressing into his palm, the discomfort nothing out of the ordinary, he reached for his mask, tracing the red and black cat-like markings with gloved fingers. It would ensure that his identity was never discovered by those he brought to justice - or those he worked with. But perhaps they were built especially for the latter; trust was something to be discouraged among ANBU.

He knocked on his younger brother's door, saying softly, "Sasuke, it's time to get up." A touch of smile decorated his lips as he listened to the sounds of rummaging from within, and stepped back in time to avoid being flattened against the wall as the door slammed open and a small, energetic boy dashed out.

"Nii-san, nii-san, will you train me today?" Sasuke danced around him with the kind of clumsy coordination that only a child could achieve.

Itachi walked calmly beside him, and was obliged to reply in the negative. "No, Sasuke. I have a mission." The boy pouted, folding his arms and blocking the way. "Not fair, Aniki! You're _always _busy."

The elder of the brothers hesitated briefly, then crouched down to Sasuke's level, leaning in close so that his jagged black bangs hung forward. Sasuke's eyes, dark and innocent, widened as Itachi lifted one hand and gently flicked his forehead with two fingers, the impact sending bullet ricochets through his brain. He stumbled backwards, rubbing the point of contact and scowling instinctively.

"Another time, Otouto. I promise." Itachi stood and descended the stairs, pausing only to remove his katana from its resting place among the rest of his weaponry before leaving the house. He abandoned the Uchiha clan compound, ready to report to his job, sliding the mask over his features in a smooth, bland gesture.

He was faceless, voiceless and mindless. He was ANBU.

* * *

A tall, stoutly-built man slouched against the gate, minute spots of dandruff visible on his near-bald scalp. He lounged as if he belonged there, leaning on the metal pole, counting the dust particles he could send flying by scuffing his feet. And in a way he did; he was the keeper of the afternoon Konoha guard shift, where time passed in cloud shapes.

Now he looked up with more interest than he had ever exhibited before during this terribly exciting job. He had _visitors -_ not just visitors, but _visitors. _After the interminable phases of spirit-boggling boredom, everyone who came close enough for conversation was a _visitor. _But obviously these were not your average tourists.

The leader of the group was unclear, as the man and woman in front walked side by side, blaringly equal. It was something besides side by side, though - move by move, almost, as if one of them were orienting their own steps around the other's. The strange coordination was very smoothly executed, and it was hard to tell who was setting the pace. His gaze lingered longest on the man, however; a young, civil expression, though the innumerable piercings hinted at some degree of rebelliousness. The woman was not unattractive, but her features were most accented - everything jutted out, or jutted in.

The guard's scrutiny then proceeded to the last member of the eclectic threesome, whose face had an intensely aquatic appearance. This didn't particularly throw him, not nearly as much as did the rapid, assertive approach of the pierced man. That one exuded an aura strong enough to split itself from mere power; he somehow gave off an air of all-encompassment, as if every living thing within sight was alive only because he decreed it. But that was absurd, wasn't it? Even the Hokage had no such control.

The gatekeeper, who was feeling extremely inexperienced and unprepared despite hours of work at this exact point, spoke up bravely, using his best of-course-I'm-pleased-to-meet-you-but-what-exactly-is-your-business-here voice. "Good afternoon, lady and gentlemen." It was a more formal greeting than he usually proffered, but he didn't dare provide anything less.

"Polite types, here," the aquatic one observed jocularly. It teetered on the verge of being a compliment, but didn't quite reach that status.

The sentry noticed that the woman and the male whom he was certain was bestowed with an indefinite amount of shark blood were looking at the blond, sophisticated man. Not for direction, but seemingly for a show of some sort. He could feel sweat soaking through his second layer of clothing as he met the steely, expectant gaze with no small trepidation.

He found, to his dismay and shock, that those orbs weren't eyes at all - they were deep cerulean whirlpools, whirring like liquid tornadoes. He tried to resist the impossible magnetism, but he was being sucked in by a pounding vacuum, pelting him with sharp darts to weaken him as he submitted to the will of the two treacherous oceans in front of him. And suddenly there was a tsunami swelling up all around him and there was no route down which escape was an option, and it crashed over him with too much rage for any nerves. As his every fibre drowned in the flow, cell by cell, dying billions of times in just a second, his single earnest prayer was that the darkness would erase this from his memory.

* * *

Pein drew back, his mouth dry, and knew he'd screwed up. Something had stopped before _he _had. He dropped to the fallen man's side, pressing his finger to the damp neck. His own heart beat faster, as if to make up for the silence of the one he was listening to. One thump..._nothing..._two thumps..._nothing..._three thumpsfourthumpsfive..._nothing. _

He stood up, slowly but still too quickly for his overbalanced body, purposely facing away from Konan and Kisame. They didn't speak, but he couldn't guarantee how long it would stay that way, and the last thing he wanted to hear right now was...well, anything. So he launched himself into Konoha, disappearing over the civilian rooftops, his jumps unburdened but his soul not so lucky.

Konan made a move to go after him, then turned to Kisame, who was still and impassive. "I'm going to follow him," she said convincingly. It was equal parts invitation and statement.

"More power to you, then," Kisame said, knowing she'd need it. "He isn't going to be an easy find." It was equal parts refusal and opinion. Kisame hunted for the kill, not for the catch. Konan spared him one final glance before leaving him alone, tracing the path of imaginary footfalls etched into her visual mind.

He'd killed him. Pein had killed him. But she didn't do easy, anyway.

* * *

Pein landed in a backyard selected for its size and emptiness, which were both abundant. He panted for a moment and tried to hold it down, but it rose up and up until it came out, inevitably.

He leaned over and retched, ugly gulping sounds stirring in his chest and clawing their way up his throat, their wake raw and stinging. Bile spattered the grass over and over with sickly splashes, each bout of regurgitation worsening the nausea, until finally his dry-heaves subsided into jolting hiccups. He stayed hunched in on himself, afraid to breathe deeply in case he incurred the wrath of his unsettled stomach again. A hollow cough hacked his lungs and he withheld the drool, though he wished for nothing better than to get the putrid taste out of his mouth.

The world was brimming with despicable creatures of evil, greed and terror, and he had always thought there were far too many of them. But now he came to realize that it wasn't the guilty who created the hangings, the decapitations, the suffering and vomiting onto green fields. It was the innocent who brought all that into existence and kept it going. And it was the innocent who had forced him to his knees with sickness and scruples.

He was comforted, and appalled, by his own irrevocable guilt.

* * *

"Allow me to guess - Tsunade turned you down, yet again." Chair legs squealed as a hefty, broad-shouldered man with a bushy mane of white hair moved aside to make room for the newcomer, spilling drops of sake from an overflowing cup as he did so. "How'd you know?" he asked, his voice breathy and uneven after a long, fresh draught of alcohol.

"You reek of strong spirits," his companion countered as he squatted easily on his stool," and it's just past nine-thirty in the morning. A little early even for you, Jiraiya." He rested the tips of his spidery fingers on the edge of the table, his amused, supercilious smile showing through the stray strands of oily black hair that blew over his pasty cheeks. Jiraiya returned the smile, more amiably but also more bitterly.

"No time is too early or too late for sake, or appealing women; you should know that, Orochimaru." His cheeks wrinkled in jollity with the remembrance of some escapade (while his friend, and reluctant accomplice in many of his misadventures, grimaced), then lapsed back into his moodiness. "I can't believe she refused even after I promised to pay for the drinks," he griped, running his thumb down the curved red lines extending from his beady eyes to his chin as he pondered how best to approach his next romancing attempt. Orochimaru's following quiet laugh was entirely for his own benefit, as he considered all the ways his comrade could manage to botch it.

Orochimaru stared down the mug that Jiraiya had ordered for him (without asking, but that was Jiraiya for you), as he half-listened to the comical mourning punctuated with fervent, graphic admiration of the female anatomy (and half-smirked the whole time, but that was Orochimaru for you). Finally, with a concluding, energetic swig of his drink, the 'drunkard' kind, where the entire mouth did the swallowing and the glug-glug of fiery liquid slopping down the oesophagus was plainly audible, Jiraiya rose to depart. He had just finished rattling off a full description of Tsunade's rejection (and it wasn't pretty, but that was Tsunade for you).

Jiraiya liked talking about his greatest humiliations, 'getting them off his chest' and all that drivel. Orochimaru made it his business never to experience humiliation.

He had been inordinately successful in this aim, except for that single incident, years ago. It was funny the way people assumed that injustices and grudges were all forgotten over time, and felt they could factor them out of the equation and breeze along toward the result, expressed very nicely and lucidly in percentage or fraction or decimal. But if you left out a digit, your answer was wrong. He still remembered.

It simply wasn't possible to forget the face that had crushed your ambition, flattened it into a stringy pancake and shoved it down your gullet with a hot poker. It was a crude metaphor, and Orochimaru knew it, but it was what he felt when he pictured the yellow of the hair, the ruddy peach of the skin, the blue of the handsome irises, the candy pink and white of the famous smile. It didn't matter if the precise details were fuzzy - the colours alone formed a rainbow in his mind, reminding him that the pot of gold at its end was not his, and that was enough. Yes, he still remembered. And his eyes still chafed from watching that goal fall and die, and his belly still churned from digesting his defeat.

Jiraiya had loved that stupid child, and respected the Yondaime he became. Sarutobi-sensei had been a surrogate grandfather to him, and Tsunade, who was the toughest woman Orochimaru had ever met, had _cried _for him when he was killed. Not at the funeral, but afterwards, and only Orochimaru had seen her weakness, and silently scorned her for it. And he knew that Jiraiya loved _him_ too, in his perverted, plastered way, and that Sarutobi-sensei was the closest to a grandfather he could wish for, and that Tsunade might shed a few tears for him in private as well, but he didn't care.

It was true - he didn't care. Because though they were all formidable, and he admitted it, they weren't willing to go as far as life could take them. Even if they had been, it still wouldn't have worked out, because he intended to surpass life. This was the first stage, and what was it for if not to prepare him for the second?

In a way, he had the Yondaime, despite his ingrained loathing of the name and its deceased owner, to thank. If he hadn't been pushed away from what he had foolishly called his "dream", he might have devoted his entire life to an infantile concept, following in the footsteps of Sarutobi-sensei. Because though Sarutobi was smart, he was an idealist. That was what all those Hokages had in common - they were all idealists, bursting with mercy and benevolence, and so they sacrificed themselves. For what? For a new generation of idealists - another era of sacrifices. It was a pointless, tiresome circle, and Orochimaru was holding onto it with just one bony finger. He would joyfully release it when the time came.

Sarutobi-sensei had said, "Orochimaru, you are beyond a prodigy, and for that reason you deserve to be Hokage. But you haven't learned everything I've taught, and for that reason, you can't be." Those were the most infuriating words ever to touch Orochimaru's ears, words that told him, _He'd choose Tsunade over me. He'd choose _Jiraiya _over me. _

His gray-brown marble eyes were narrowed, his eyebrows like sharp brushstrokes angling them downwards, and his jaw was shut so tightly that he was squeezing the moisture from his tongue. His teeth had a dry, sandpapery texture, and suddenly all he wanted was to leave this smutty café with its stink of vodka and coffee and its open, roofless outdoor seating where the sun could raise welts on your crown, and retire from this idiotic town full of the betrayed and their betrayers (and he was both, and that was the dumbest thing of all.)

He stood up lithely, though he didn't see how sitting here was more of a waste of time than being anywhere else in Konoha. Then he paused, turned back and took a sip from his untouched mug, because he wanted the tang. It was acidic, corroding his insides, but when the burning zest had faded, he was invigorated. It was probably the source of Jiraiya's energy _(and sorrow), _and Tsunade's determination _(and anger). _As for him, he was a different kind of addict.

Then he strode off, leaving behind the remaining alcohol sloshing in his cup for a waitress to pick up and pour down the drain. He resolved not to thank Jiraiya for it; it _was _poison, after all.

With painful, filthy slowness, the specks of sake that stained the white tabletop evaporated, rising up to take their place in the cycle.

He licked his lips, and no one suspected that he was willingly ingesting the lethal aftertaste.

* * *

A/N: I feel kind of cheap and guilty right now, because I'm only mentioning the Kyuubi attack now, when it's quite an important event, but I wanted to have it occur after Pein's visit to Konoha. Then I realized that that wouldn't work if I wanted to recruit Itachi right away, and I just wasn't willing to have several years pass before I could have him join. Likely this will happen a lot; I don't plan ahead very well. :P

I don't know if Pein throwing up was OOC...probably a little, maybe a little not. But you can tell me that.

I think I messed up the introductions to our two new members (Alert! OOCness! Alert!), but some things felt right even if others didn't. Please let me know what parts worked for you! And also, thank you very, very, very much for all the wonderful feedback I've received since Chapter 15 - it blew me away! I've now reached 200+ reviews and I'm quite ecstatic, actually. The success of this story is thanks to all you wonderful readers, and I'm always thinking about your comments, so be assured that no review goes to waste. :)


	17. Chapter 17: Extremity

First off, I owe everyone an apology. This chapter is neither good nor long enough to make up for the ridiculously long break, but hopefully you'll enjoy it anyway. I have no defense, except that I never meant to stay away for such a long time; it was just supposed to be a breath of fresh air, not a vacation to the Alps. That's all figurative, by the way. :P I am very sincerely sorry, and it's great to be back in the loop for _Pretense. _

Thanks for journeying this far with me; there are many sights ahead! 

* * *

Chapter 17 - Extremity 

Pein's hand was splayed out on the grass, his knuckles white as he gripped the soil like a lifeline, green tufts burrowing underneath his fingernails. He tried to concentrate on the vague background bustle, the birds' sporadic chirping, anything but his heartbeat, because his body seared with every wrenching pulse. He was amazed by how calm he was, even if he didn't feel it, and even if he was certain he didn't look it.

Presently a shadow fell over him, and he felt the sweat on the back of his neck cool and dry as shade replaced the clammy heat of the day. It was somebody, a person - but he could barely sense a Chakra. He kept his head down, the veins behind his eye sockets bulging as he strained to bring the energy into focus. It was being suppressed, quite skilfully.

Finally looking up, his gaze travelled from the familiar shinobi-style sandals to the tight, thin abdomen framed by a dirt-smeared white vest, to the long black armguards and the visible fingertips wrapped around an elegant katana as it scythed neatly into its sheath, to the animal-masked face. Judging from the uniform-like format of the clothing, this was a member of some kind of ninja police, but he could conclude little more. He had never before fully appreciated the amazing readability of a human face.

His knees dug into the ground as he directed all his presence of thought toward converging the faint distillations of Chakra into a solid signature. This was a battle of wills with his physical and mental sides allied against someone who possibly had a grasp of balance as sure as his own, and it unsettled him.

Suddenly, without any kind of surge or warning, he broke through whatever defense had been there, but Pein didn't know if it was thanks to his aptitude or this stranger's discontinuation of the energy repression.

He realized now that part of the reason, at least, for his inability to sense the Chakra earlier had been due to the fact that it was not an exceptionally large one. It was not weak, exactly, nor even mediocre - but somehow _naturally suppressed, _as if it were trapped in some kind of purgatory, preventing it from reaching its full potential. It was very flat, evenly spread out to all the extremities, like an airless, uninhabited plain. Though, when he probed and pushed a little, he felt swirls of wind and water, whirling with fleeting tinges of bitterness and darkness. But each one he found disappeared after a moment, like a mirage, an illusion of something that was almost and always there.

As if understanding that he'd been found out in the way that was unique to Pein, the man next removed his mask, giving up his identity completely.

There was black hair, slightly wavy and tied back, like strips of silky coal. There were black eyes too, and for once that was all Pein could discern from them - black. Otherwise they were simply holes, as if you could show them a mirror and see nothing reflected back at you but the unfinished end of a tunnel. The face was young, seemingly, but the ensemble created by its lines, closed lips and angled eyebrows was nearly ancient.

The stranger offered him no support whatsoever - not a hand to pull him up, not a word to inquire if he was all right, not a sympathetic expression. His gaze was barely even disinterested as it took in the viscous puddles of vomit.

Pein rose slowly to his feet, relieved that he didn't tremble. There were many classifications of shinobi, the most pronounced being those who were weak, those who weren't, and those who did not judge weakness, nor accept it. The last was the one to be wary of; those who fell under that category spared no one, neither timid nor bold, smart nor stupid, kind nor cruel. There was absolutely no indication that this ninja belonged to that group, and yet also there was no sign that he didn't, and this was what sent warning chills crawling over Pein's shoulders like spiders broken free of their webs.

Pein resisted the urge to wipe his mouth with his sleeve, knowing it was a self-demeaning gesture, and spoke with so much formality that it momentarily stifled his vocal chords. "I apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused." The strange youth didn't acknowledge his statement.

"You are...testing me...?" The lips opened with perfect timing, sound emerging the instant they moved. Pein had to add the question mark in his mind, however, as the voice seemed to neglect it. It was a bland, hooded tone, but not just that - it contained no punctuation, none at all. In place of periods, commas or anything else, there were simply pauses, full stops.

Pein wasn't exactly sure what was being asked of him, or even if it was rhetorical or not, but he wasn't the type to ignore questions unless silence was his answer. "In a sense, yes," he said, aiming for a light, concealing response, but it felt more like a brick wall without cement holding it together. Suitable for appearances alone, but useless in warfare.

Suddenly their unspoken, precarious peace treaty shattered as the black-haired young man half-lunged, half-stepped forward. Moving instinctively with the actions of his adversary, Pein sidestepped, and so they found themselves standing there, kunai outstretched defensively and offensively at the same time. The blades rested in the air a couple of centimetres apart, each opponent wary of actually making physical weaponry contact with the other, as if frightened of encountering some high-voltage force-field.

Black stood its ground against blue, dark versus dark, as the metal blades and their jagged, tearing points inched closer together.

* * *

Konan stopped, fingernails scrabbling between shingles as she kept her balance on top of some restaurant - she figured it had to be an eatery, judging from the exotic, nauseatingly tantalizing odours wafting up with the breeze. 

She was hungry, but she was so unreasonably impatient that just the thought of having to sit down somewhere and order food made her feel debilitatingly static, and she couldn't stand it.

She slid down the roof and landed in a catlike crouch on the street, the scent of overcooked - _something - _momentarily disappearing as her senses were flipped by their gravitational descent. It returned with full, gagging force when she lighted on the ground behind the trash cans. She changed direction, turning away from the first real 'downtown' she'd seen in a long time, needing to escape the stench. The air was far too laden with life here - with each breath she could feel herself inhaling the essences of a thousand people, and she didn't really know what she was getting.

She ended up in front of the gate once again, albeit on a different side of it. There was nobody anywhere; nobody living, anyway. She attempted to ignore the body, lying there like a shredded piece of expensive furniture left out for waste disposal, but the longer she stood there in feigned denial the more she felt like an undertaker, like it was her _job _to take care of the corpse.

She approached it (did all people become 'it' once they were dead, or was that only the rule for strangers, she wondered) and lifted her toe to nudge it, but that seemed disrespectful. So instead she grabbed it by the shoulders and heaved it over, face-up. For a moment she had the curious sensation of being able to feel the blood running through its veins, a moving river under her finger, and she let go, wiping her hands on her robe.

She would have set up some sort of burial ground for it, but the foot of a stone gate didn't seem like an appropriate resting place. And there were probably people who wanted a funeral and some closure for their grief, people who were more entitled to it than she. At any rate, she liked to think that everybody had someone somewhere who cared. It wasn't quite a belief - if it ever had been, her time on the streets and long since erased it - but it was a thought, a wish, a treasured shred of optimism that she clutched to her chest like a rag doll.

So she buried him in her heart, or tried to, and found with a pang that it was full of skeletons already, bare bones and the flesh of memories she had let go of forever. She shied from that graveyard - one day she would revisit all those sleeping souls, lay her blessings at their heads, but not today.

She didn't know if it was north, east, west or south, but she turned. She travelled for a while, sometimes thinking, sometimes looking, but mostly just moving. It wasn't light enough to be floating, but it wasn't heavy enough to be sinking, and at least she could still tell the difference between the two. She realized abruptly that she wasn't sure if she was in Konoha anymore - she couldn't see the gate, and there was vegetation all around, browning at the edges, an impossibly faint smell of burnt grass tainting the air. The thought of turning around to check for landmarks didn't strike her at the moment, however, because what stood in front of her was much more interesting.

It was a chapel - a damaged chapel, its stone split and greying, vines tearing it down chunk by chunk like tenacious, knotted green snakes, sections of wall collapsed already in lonely heaps of slate and dust. So far as she could see, it had no windows, but its door was relatively intact - she didn't know what it was made of, something dark and very solid and seemingly unsusceptible to decay, but it wasn't wood. It lacked a doorknob, so she pushed on it warily with her knuckles, and it swung open stickily.

It was obvious from the decrepit state that there had been no religious activity in this place for years, but there remained a certain devoutness in the rotting pews and the faded, elaborately designed murals on the floor. The stench was as you would expect it, infused with mould and decomposition and moisture, but if she bypassed those she could almost sense a fine, bitter incense purifying the atmosphere.

There was an altar at the front, a scratched marble table with an inch-thick layer of grime decorating it. Its stateliness was somewhat destroyed, and she didn't particularly want to touch it. She did, however, extend her hand towards a corner of the very front left pew bench, and was dismayed to find a piece of it crumble under her gentle grip. She withdrew quickly, feeling sacrilegious.

Looking down, she saw chunks of damp, rotted wood scattered at her feet like pieces of a soggy chocolate chip cookie, and she bent to retrieve them. The floor seemed to be made of the same solid, unfamiliar substance as the door, judging from its lack of scuff marks, and she slid her palm over it thoughtfully, wincing slightly as the glossy surface rubbed into her calluses.

She traced circles on the floor, relishing its smoothness, until her knuckles thumped into what she identified as a leg of one of the pew's kneeling boards. She gripped the wooden knob deftly and pulled it down. The surface of the kneeling board was, unusually, uncarpeted, and it was engraved with a circular carving at the end. She drew in a breath in what she wouldn't be so cliché as to call a gasp, but the expression of surprise was merited in this case.

She grabbed her right middle finger in a vicelike grip, her skin whitening as she squeezed the blood from it. The ring - more specifically, the kanji, in that strange style that made it difficult to read in certain lights - White Tiger. Its design was exactly mirrored on the kneeling board, neatly chiselled in. Her hand was shaking, and she clenched it into a fist quickly, but not before her ring had slipped from its place and clattered on top of the carving. She froze, then forced herself to retrieve it. It burned her with a heat she hadn't felt since she was six and had stuck her hand in the oven just to see if it hurt as much as her parents had told her it would.

She wasn't that stupid anymore, or she liked to think so, but she was just as reckless and easily baited by curiosity, so she turned to the adjacent pew and tugged down its kneeling board too. Sure enough, it bore a kanji engraving as well, though she didn't recognize this one. It read 'the Void', which was a puzzle in itself, but the true mysticism lay in the corresponding ring that rested in the centre of the carving.

She picked it up, hissing - her ring had cooled, but this new one blazed like concentrated sunlight. _There must be an explanation for this, _she thought. Unfortunately, none was immediately forthcoming, so she moved toward the next pew. Then she stopped, a familiar face crossing her mind. She stiffened, her hold tightening on the Void and stroking her White Tiger. It wasn't a face she wanted to think of, but it wasn't something she could ignore.

It was somebody who'd killed an innocent man. _Probably not for the first time either, _her jaded subconscious whispered.

Somebody whose principles and personality were virtually unknown to her, if existent. _He's not knowable...he's not _noble...

Somebody who might know what to make of this. _Hate him - you know you can do it, if you try._

Somebody who, despite past and present transgressions, deserved to know before anyone else. _It's his right._

She set her jaw and exited the church. She thought of the sightless, empty body of the guard, of _his _cheek with water droplets trickling down it, of that dark, permanent stain on _his _cloak. She even thought about that cold kunai as it tickled her neck, when she was too terrified to tremble.

She loped off, purposely avoiding the gates. It was funny how many important decisions were made with close to zero understanding of the situation. Actually, more like horrifying.

She couldn't hate him, because some of the blood was his.

* * *

Kisame liked bars. 

He liked to drink; he liked getting drunk. He liked spending time with people who were too intoxicated to notice that he was more fish than man. He liked being in a place where his vulgarity was laughed at but not looked down upon. He wasn't some kind of control freak; he could take the release, the loss of fine motor skills, in stride. But most of all, he met the most interesting characters in bars.

For instance, the only girl he'd ever kissed had met up with him in a bar. He hadn't loved her, and the beer had been worse than river water, but it was a kiss. He hadn't even been _that _drunk. But that was another story.

Today's story was a tall, lean man with flowing black hair and a pale, swarthy face, slouched flexibly against the pub's rickety doorway. Kisame grinned widely, making a beeline for him, and inquired, "Are you waiting for somebody?"

"Not today," the stranger said, keen black eyes sucking in his unique questioner. He was disappointingly sober.

"That's what I thought," Kisame said with a trace of smugness, maintaining his brutish grin. "The difference between waiting for somebody else and waiting for yourself is pretty obvious if you know what to look for."

The man smirked back. "Is it now?"

"Oh, yeah," Kisame confirmed. "If you lean there for much longer, you're gonna get splinters in your butt."

There was no pause in the exchange of words as the man snickered softly, not shifting his position. "I appreciate the warning."

"Just doing my good deed for the day," Kisame said, showing his teeth a little more. Then, pleasantly, "Does it bother you at all to have a conversation with a random stranger?"

"Not at all," was the cool reply. The man detached himself from the pub, slipping his hands into the pockets of his green Jounin vest, and began to walk down the street, Kisame ambling at his side.

This casual new acquaintance promised even more entertainment than a kiss.

* * *

Konan spotted Kisame from a mile away; Samehada was almost as conspicuous as the blue skin. She only registered his companion, however, once she'd landed directly in front of an unfamiliar fellow with an extraordinarily sallow complexion and greasy black hair, seemingly a ninja, judging from the vest and holster. He stopped abruptly, as did she. "Kisame," she said, startled. "Who's this?" 

Kisame shot the man a sideways glance with a hulking shrug. "We haven't reached the introductions yet," he explained.

"Orochimaru," the stranger offered, not extending his arm for a handshake. The name rolled a little too easily from his lips. Looking suspiciously in his eyes, Konan saw a hungry expression there, like lust; but it wasn't normal, and it wasn't attractive. It seemed like...self-lust, lust for _himself. _It was possibly the most revolting thing she'd ever seen.

"Nice hair," she said before she could stop herself; but it was oily and just hanging there, right ahead of her. She hadn't meant to insult him (then again, she'd really wanted to). Kisame barked a laugh, but Orochimaru's slitted eyes narrowed further, and she had a feeling that she wasn't making any friends today.

She gritted her teeth as a wave of unbearable heat seared through her, and next thing she knew Orochimaru's hand was shooting out to intercept the new ring as it fell from her blistered palm. He brought it up to eye level with avid interest, angling it this way and that for a better look.

"It's just a ring," she said coldly, and though the words were forced, the rudeness came naturally. "No need to ogle."

She could tell he was displeased by her comment, but he merely neutralized his expression and held it out to her, asking civilly, "Do you want it back?"

She was about to snatch it from him, but a painful twinge reminded her of its odd properties, and its temperature didn't seem to affect him the way it had her. She fixed him with an even stare and said, "Keep it for now, but not forever."

Kisame chose this moment to intervene with, "What brings you here?" Reminded of her original purpose and frustrated that she'd allowed herself to be distracted by this repellent specimen, she said quickly, "We need to find Pein. There's something I need to show him -"

"Perhaps I can help," Orochimaru interrupted smoothly. He was still toying with the ring, rubbing it with long, pliable fingers. "I am a native of Konoha, after all."

Konan considered the offer; she was disinclined to accept, due to the loathsome impression he'd made, but it would be undeniably handy to have someone who knew where they were at all times. "Maybe you can," she said, firmly enough to leave no doubt as to who was calling the shots.

She set out at the front of the party, keeping one watchful eye on the wily ninja behind her and the other determined one straight ahead. At the rear, Kisame grinned almost admiringly and drew level with Orochimaru. He didn't claim eloquence, but sometimes there was just one way of putting things.

"Watch your back - she guts deer like a dream come true."

* * *

A/N: Don't ask me why, but for some reason Orochimaru and Kisame just seem like they could get along quite well. And also, while writing this chapter, it crossed my mind that KisamexKonan would actually be a semi-plausible pairing. But then again...no.

Anyway, I'm fairly satisfied with this chapter, though like I said it hardly has the kind of quality to gain immediate forgiveness for my recent lapse. I don't really like the last line, mostly because I meant to continue writing, but I decided that I'd made you wait more than long enough and that I very badly wanted to update, so I cut it off.

As always, I'd love to hear your criticism and comments:)


	18. Chapter 18: Connection

At last - I'm back, with Chapter 18 of _Pretense.  _I'm sorry for the wait; maybe I should just apologize here for all the waits of the future?  It's just hard to balance life with writing sometimes, especially when I'm not in the mood for either :P .  Anyway, if there's anybody who hasn't abandoned me yet, read and enjoy.  Not making any promises as to when Chapter 19 will come out, but reviews are the best kind of encouragement!

* * *

Chapter 18 - Connection

Neither Kisame nor Orochimaru opened their mouths as they traveled, weaving between chimneys, passing from smell to smell and colour to colour.  Konan was glad; if Kisame had made one of his cryptic snide remarks, she would probably have told him to shut up, and if Orochimaru had said anything at all, she would definitely have done worse. 

She wasn't really temperamental, but she had always had a slight patience deficiency when it came to important things.  She wasn't afraid to smash a few dishes in order to finish the washing-up more quickly, but the ones that came out intact were spotless.  And if she forgot to pick up a jagged shard of china, it was because she knew exactly whose feet would chance to step on it. 

This was important, and she wasn't going to stop for anybody.  

Unfortunately, she was forced to break that vow almost as soon as she'd made it, as Orochimaru halted suddenly, everything about him going still except for his sly smile, which threaded smoothly over his jaw like a thin scar.  His attention was fixed on some action below the edge of the rooftop, and Konan, her gaze frigid, resolved that she would kick him if this wasn't good. 

Kisame let out a grunting huff of surprise, and Konan was similarly affected upon leaning over to discover that in the grassy yard below, two figures stood opposite one another in a clear battle stance, kunai-bearing arms stretched protectively across their bodies.  One of them was very distinctively Pein, the careful expression of deadpan calculation a giveaway.  The other, an unfamiliar dark-haired youth in uniform, bore a surprisingly similar look. 

Konan turned suspiciously to Orochimaru.  "You don't know what Pein looks like," she accused.  "So how did you...?" Orochimaru didn't answer, but she followed his line of sight, realizing with a start that he was interested in Pein's unknown opponent, not Pein himself.  That was something to be pursued further. 

Tired of asking questions, she leaped down from the roof, executing a smooth landing at the side of the two fighters.  Though they weren't fighting; they seemed to be silently threatening each other, caught in an impasse. 

Kisame fell into place beside her, and she could feel adrenaline pulsing from him as he readied himself for action.  Orochimaru was the last to descend, and he crouched across from them, blocking Pein and the stranger from both sides. 

"Konan," Pein said, his tone forbidding.  He was showing clearly that he didn't want her to interfere, his body language shutting her out even more than usual, and she resented it like never before.  The events of the past few days were churning inside her like a poorly digested meal, the big picture swirling in and out of focus as the tiniest details jumped into sharp relief.  Maybe he could conceal everything forever, but she couldn't, and she refused to go along with that kind of policy.

Almost before she knew what she was doing, she had slid her own blade into the space between the two tension-thrumming kunai, aggressively slamming her steel into Pein's weapon with a metallic ringing sound.  The unexpected impact jarred his fingers and awkwardly-angled wrist to the bone, and the kunai was loosened from his grip, plummeting to the ground.  His left arm snaked out underneath to catch it, while his right, still partially nerveless, grasped Konan's blade, wrapping his fist around her own and forcing the sharp point away from his chest.    

The pressure of his hand hardened her further, and she half-shouted at him, "Let go!" 

If any fleeting indication of shock had crossed his face, she'd missed it - he was blank and controlled as ever. "You're about to stab me," he pointed out.  "My grip is self-defense."

He released her just in time to avoid having his thumb sliced off as she jerked her arm backwards.  She'd been angry and confused before, and now, though she remained undecided, she was very decisively enraged.  Oblivious to the three shinobi watching the confrontation, the floodgates opened.

"You...you're such a...an independent jerk!  You just killed a man - you just killed a man, and...well, you're still just the same way!" she exclaimed feelingly.  Her face was growing white-hot, and now that she was immobile and the breeze of movement had stopped, sweat was gathering at the back of her neck.  "You act so untouchable, so unknowable - but I can prove you're not!" She thrust the kunai towards him again, and, as anticipated, he intercepted the blow with his own knife. She took the opportunity to swing her fist precisely towards his face, her unfaltering aim guided by a crushing desire to feel his bones splinter under her strength, his flesh mould to the shape of her skin as it bruised. 

He dipped his head in time to avoid receiving the punch full-on, which would most likely have resulted in permanent facial misalignment, but her knuckles swiped his jaw with a fair amount of force nevertheless.  She stepped back, her pupils diluted in a bold high, standing firm in triumph.  "There," she said, more quietly now.  "I touched you." 

He played his fingers along his cheek, not gingerly, but mildly wonderingly, needing to feel the stinging proof.  "Yes," he agreed, "you did."  There was so much more that needed to be said, but awareness of the surrounding audience returned to Konan with the scratch of her kunai sliding back into its holster, and she knew it would have to do for now.  Next time, though, she would push further. 

"Watch your back," Pein warned her quietly, and she thought for a stunned moment that he was threatening her (though why should it surprise her, she wondered), until she remembered the unknown third party.  She whirled, and suddenly his face was right in front of hers, those curious eyes glued onto hers.  They were bleak and concealing, like Pein's, but somehow more...dead.

It was quite a shock, and she tilted backwards involuntarily, her shoulder blades bumping briefly against Pein's chest before he gracefully shifted her to his side.  Her interference seemed to have broken whatever fragile glass wall stood between Pein and the youth, because Pein now said without hesitation, "Who are you?"

The level of the stranger's kunai had lowered, but it remained unsheathed.  "...Uchiha Itachi," came the emotionless answer, after a pause.  Orochimaru's eyes gleamed like a flash of lightning on a black night-time sea, waters swirling murkily.  "Pleased to meet you, Uchiha-san," he said with that type of smoothness that made Konan wonder if it was possible to polish one's vocal chords as one might shine one's shoes.

Pein glanced briefly in Orochimaru's direction.  His Chakra was not very plentiful, not even as much as the Uchiha's, but it was tightly and neatly coiled, controlled and ready to spring.  He stopped his examination quickly - the strange energy timbre gave him a sensation of sourness in places where he hadn't thought he had taste buds. 

"That's Orochimaru." Konan spoke in a low tone meant only for Pein, and he nodded very slightly.  "He has something you should see."

On cue, Orochimaru lifted his hand and flipped his knuckles outwards, showing the unusual ring on his left little finger.  Itachi's eyes, like Pein's, were immediately drawn to it, taking in the cryptic kanji marking, loosely caressing Orochimaru's thin, spidery pinkie. Kisame, indeed, seemed to be the only one disinterested in the trinkets; he was intently scrutinizing Itachi, noting the contrast between the shiny, clean katana and the blood-flecked animal mask. 

Pein reached out, dexterously avoiding touching Orochimaru's bare skin as he closed his forefinger and thumb over the ring.  There was a soundless sizzle that made a bone pop out in Orochimaru's jaw, and once again Pein felt the inexplicable connection between some part of himself and this small jewel.  Remembering who had initiated this, he turned back to Konan.

She was ready to respond.  "There's a chapel...a temple...thing on the border of Konoha.  It's ramshackle and falling apart, but it's definitely got some kind of affinity with these rings.  Anyway, you should see for yourself." He was about to ask her to lead him there, but they were interrupted.

"The chapel you speak of was once the place of worship for a now-extinct clan." The bland, muted tone was hardly yet familiar to the ears of the group, but it was still unmistakably that of the young Uchiha.  "It was severely damaged by the Kyuubi's attack, but it had been abandoned before that."     

Pein paused, then nodded and turned to Konan expectantly.  She knew he was waiting for her to lead the way, but she wasn't quite that docile.  She shoved her face into his without hesitation, finally speaking her mind after months, no, years of not knowing what she wanted to say. 

"Listen, Pein.  This is your business, and I'm not going to keep you from it.  But we're not finished, and I'm not going to stand to be brushed aside every time.  You haven't been honest with me about your intentions, and I haven't been clear to you about my boundaries, but sometime soon we've got to settle.  Either that, or you're going to kill me, which I know you can do easily enough."  Up close like this, he looked more invulnerable than ever, the circles in his eyes spinning to effectively hide what lay in their depths, his eyebrows stiffly cupping his lashes. From this angle, his face looked unnaturally symmetrical, expression and features uniform.  The only thing that ruined the effect was his jaw on the left side, where a small, dark bruise was forming.  He seemed to know where she was looking, because he turned his head slightly, angling her victory away from her.

Either that, or you're going to kill me, which I know you can do easily enough...he'd known she was bold, but that was further than she'd gone before.  For some reason, her open, unabashed admission of his strength made him feel weak and condemned.  He wanted to tell her that that murder had been an accident, but it wouldn't be fair for her to forgive him this offence when there had been so many worse ones. She was right; he hadn't been honest with her at all.  But he'd tried hard, in his own way, to respect her reality, even if it meant separating her from him. 

She was making him answer for his deeds here and now, and although he hated being exposed like this, hated being the interrogated rather than the interrogator, no one had ever dared to do this before, and he admired her.  Conceal it as he would, she had punched him with her fist, jabbed him with words and gestures in all the tender spots.  She drew him out of the corner, and he couldn't not reply.

"I've always listened," he said, and that at least was honest.  "But if you want, I'll talk."  He saw a hint of acceptance and knew he'd chosen the right words, even without promising anything.  She'd caught the unspoken, however; not now.  She understood; waiting was something she'd learned soon after he'd left her, though it had taken a while to put a name to that hollow, lacking feeling.

She turned and pushed off to the nearest rooftop, almost but not quite feeling sorry for that bruise on his cheek.  She heard Pein's answering whoosh of air behind her, and knew he was on her heels.  For a moment, she felt the power and pressure of being a leader, and she slowed a little, letting him catch up.  It was easier to share the load.

Back on the ground, Kisame and Orochimaru were puzzled over the confrontations they'd just witnessed.  "Sexual tension," was Kisame's snarky diagnosis.  Orochimaru raised one eyebrow sceptically, ignoring the jokes in favour of Uchiha Itachi.  He smiled in his thin, translucent way and asked, "Are you coming, Itachi-san?"

"You sound like a hooker when you say it like that," Kisame commented, a grating laugh rubbing on his throat.  For Kisame, indiscriminate to race, gender or anything else, friend and foe were equal game.  Orochimaru's sly grin went slightly cold on his face - he'd had many worse insults thrown at him, but criticism, especially in the form of gratuitous entertainment (the way Kisame liked it), rankled at his pride.  He shot toward the sky after Pein and Konan, his subtle means of sulking.

There was hardly a pause before Kisame said, "I'm Hoshigaki Kisame, the only member of the party whose name you haven't heard yet." He extended one huge, calloused hand, and after some barely noticeable deliberation, Uchiha Itachi met it with his much smaller palm.  A slow, hard grin spread across Kisame's rugged jaw line, and Itachi carefully shifted the placement of his fingers, which would otherwise have resulted in multiple bone dislocation as Kisame squeezed out a handshake. 

Wise of him, Kisame thought, mildly and mockingly impressed.  Out loud, he said, "So, are you joining us?"

Itachi considered.  He was due back at the Uchiha compound now, to deliver to his father the mission report - successful, obviously, because there was never anything else to expect.  He would bow, demonstrating his deference (but inferiority was not at all the same as indifference, and that was the reason for the ache in his back when he bent down so stiffly), and receive another assignment.  If he was fortunate, it would be a long task that would take him out of town, away from his narrow, velvet-lined word with its soundproof walls.  Routine was a trap. 

He stripped off his armguards, the stretchy material snapping, his muscles finally loosening after hours of tension, and dropped them on the grass.  Clenching and unclenching his fists once, he nodded curtly and lunged gracefully toward the cloud mass the filled the blue yonder. 

Today was a day of defiance. 

* * *

 Konan discovered, to her secret dismay, that she didn't quite remember how exactly to reach the chapel, most likely due to the fact that she'd found her way there in a trance-like state the first time.  She managed an educated guess at the general direction, though, and if Pein noticed that she'd led them in a circle at least once, he didn't even flick an eyebrow.

Yeah, right.  She knew he'd noticed.

She silently thanked the stars when she finally spotted that half caved-in heap of blackened shingles (or perhaps not so silently, when she saw the sideways slant of Pein's eyes and the suspicious quirk of his cheekbone).

"Nice," Kisame commented, nostrils flaring slightly as he took in the fallen remains of the small religious site.

"Supposedly, the clan left Konoha suddenly, many years ago," Itachi explained tonelessly.  Konan could see him scanning a mental textbook page in his head.  "There was no evident cause for their departure, and they never figured in history; they were small and unobtrusive in society, and no one knew anything of their lifestyle or ability."

"There were stories," Orochimaru interjected.  Four heads whirled to face him; he stood, temporarily having been forgotten, at the back of the party, his long, oily hair still settling restlessly around his ears.  "Dark, deadly and often uncontrollable powers, genetic mutations, human sacrifices..." He let the sentence lie, his eyes narrowing at Pein as his lips slid upwards into a serpentine smile - enough said.

"Like Itachi-san said, no one knew what they were talking about," Konan spoke up calmly, but she allowed her natural aggression to play an underlying role to her words.  She'd make it clear as many times as she saw fit that she stood on the opposite side from Orochimaru.  She couldn't help herself from judging Pein for his wilful actions, she couldn't keep from conflicting with him, but she wasn't done with him yet, and as long as she was with him, this was where she stayed.

Pein knew her efforts were wasted.  Her rebuttal couldn't stop everyone's thoughts from turning to him, including his own.  Dark?  He couldn't deny that.  Deadly?  He had saved his own life in exchange for another's often enough; it was the shinobi's twisted way.  Uncontrollable?  Slightly, when he allowed his emotions to surface.  All bloodlines were genetic mutations, weren't they?  As for human sacrifices, he wasn't sure what was implied.  He knew, however, that he'd been a sacrifice, a scapegoat, too many times.  Human was a broad term, and sacrifice was not always a question of life or death.

In any case, he had existed on theory for too long; he wanted something concrete.  And it looked as if the only possibility of that lay inside this chapel.  With this thought, his thumb throbbed painfully.  Glancing around, he noticed Konan rubbing her right middle finger, on which was perched the not-so-inanimate White Tiger, and Orochimaru convulsively clenching his left fist.  Kisame seemed at first to be the only unaffected ring bearer, but then he turned deliberately toward the chapel, frowning.

Pein was busy deducing.  Was it possible that Zero responded to his intentions with a sensation of heat, which was then communicated through all the other rings as well?  After all, the ring hadn't burned until he had felt a strong urge to enter the chapel.

He turned, ducking to enter the chapel without denting his head in.   The atmosphere was heavy with fungi-thriving humidity, and the dark wood of the pews, which were surprisingly intact, smelled damp and old.  He breathed in and felt the air brush his throat roughly, full of dust chips.  Behind him, Konan entered with more ease, it being her second time inside the chapel.  They both paused at the same time, feeling as if they should kneel or whisper a prayer.  But they didn't.

Itachi walked in, winding gracefully around the doorway and slipping between the pews.  Kisame, following, was less reverent, filling the entrance with a massive shadow that threw the entire interior into shade.

Orochimaru lingered just outside, looking in but not venturing a step.  There was something about the place that seemed to turn him off; "holiness" was too strong and pretentious a word, but perhaps he lacked that faithful part of the soul that allowed people to connect with any kind of religious mindset.  He was pushed back, tainted too deeply for salvation.

Konan noticed this with vindictive satisfaction.  She didn't want him lying outside in wait, but she definitely didn't want him inside.  She turned to Pein, took a deep breath, and shot Kisame a look.  "Move it," she said bluntly, "you're blocking the sunlight."  He obliged with amusement.

"If you pull down the kneeling boards, you'll find rings, like mine and yours," she told Pein.  She was staring at him, but his face was turned to the side and his eye was in shadow.  "Unless the one I found was the last one, of course," she added doubtfully. 

Pein was at close enough proximity to his companions to effortlessly sense all of their Chakra timbres, intermingling in a distracting mental swirl, like a cake with too many flavours.  He tried to tune it out, but he could feel their pressures, their expectancy as they waited for him to act.  He thought of turning to them and admitting up-front that he wasn't yet seventeen, didn't really know what he was doing and hadn't officially graduated as a Genin, to see which of them tried to kill him on the spot.

But instead, he brusquely kicked one of the kneeling boards down, the second from the front in the left aisle of pews. It swung smoothly to the ground with a muffled thud that echoed through the holes in the walls, and he leaned over it curiously.  As promised, there was an ornate carving in its unscratched surface, with a ring lying in its exact centre.

He read its kanji without touching it; "Vermilion Bird".  It had a mythical, nostalgic sound to it, as if he had once heard a fairy tale featuring it long, long ago, then had forgotten it as he grew older.  The closest thing to a storyteller he'd ever known, though, had been Jinsei, and he remembered every phrase his old mentor had spoken with sharpest clarity.    

He reached down to pick up the ring, and felt heat sear through his hand as his fingers dangled a couple of millimetres above it.  His gaze snapped upwards to land on Itachi, who was standing in a corner of the chapel, shadows running up and down his thin arms, staring intensely at the Vermilion Bird.  Pein thought he caught a flash of bloody, molten scarlet in those black eyes, like an optical reflex.

Orochimaru noticed it too, and he licked his lips. 

Before anything else could come to pass, Pein swept the ring up into his fist, hiding it from view, ignoring its unpleasant temperature as it branded its design into his palm like a hot iron.  Konan couldn't tell from his face, but she knew how it must feel, and she wondered how he could bear to stand there and hold onto it. 

"Let's look further," Pein suggested, straightening.  So they all overturned the kneeling boards, one by one, with the exception of Orochimaru, who waited just outside, an accomplice by presence but not by participation.  They found no more rings, but sure enough, each pew's kneeling board held one carving, some familiar and others unknown.  Pein kept track of the placement of each in his mind: first left pew, Konan's White Tiger; first right pew, Orochimaru's the Void; second left pew, the Vermilion Bird; second right pew, Zetsu's Black Tortoise; third left pew, Kisame's Southern Star; third right pew, the unfamiliar Azure Dragon; fourth left pew, Kakuzu's Northern Star; fourth right pew, Sasori's the Virgin; and the fifth left pew, the untried Three Levels.  Strangely, there was no fifth right pew. 

They all looked down at their own rings, unease, wonder and awe evident in their demeanours, until Konan asked slowly, "Pein, where's yours?" It was what he'd been thinking, too; they were all there, except, of course, Zero.  That weirdly alone feeling of disconnectedness that he'd felt most of his life was back with reinforcements; no part of him, no small, unimportant accessory, would ever belong. 

Until - "Here."  It was Itachi; he had now moved to the very front of the chapel, and his hand, and gaze, rested on the top of the dirt-encrusted marble altar.  Pein approached it, spotting a very familiar design through the streaks that Itachi's fingers had made in the grime.  He rubbed it out completely with his palm, tracing the kanji - Zero. 

There was a silence that was laden with forgotten history, befitting for the ruin of the forlorn chapel, until Kisame broke it gruffly with, "Are we done here?" He flicked the wall with one finger, watching as it made a sizeable dent.

"Yes," Pein said, after swallowing to dislodge the questions creating uncomfortable lumps in his throat.  He stared at the greyish guck covering the wrinkles in his hand as the others filed out, except Konan, who waited.

He didn't know exactly what these exceptional rings were for, but he now knew for sure that they were connected.  And he suddenly realized that he was carrying two rings, and he didn't want quite that much firepower. Not yet, not now, when he didn't know what he wanted or where to set his limits. 

His indecision ended with him standing just inside the doorway, watching Itachi and Orochimaru disappear over the rooftops. He shouted, "Itachi!"

Itachi stopped and turned around, the waning sun rippling through his thin figure.  Pein wound his arm back and let the ring Vermilion Bird fly, soaring aerodynamically like a golden bullet against the sky.  Itachi raised both hands, cupping them together to cushion the ring's momentum as he caught it with ease.  He held it out in front of him for a moment, and it fleetingly reflected a jewelled ruby light into his eyes.  Then he slid it onto his right ring finger, and left once again without a backward look. 

Kisame, who had witnessed everything and seemed unusually pensive, glanced at Pein and said, "I'll be back," as he set off toward town again, Samehada secure in its place of honour. 

Pein turned back and was startled to see Konan standing straight by the altar.  For a moment he imagined her as a priestess, stern and devout as she preached the word of a greater existence. 

"Pein, you know..." she began, coming toward him more hesitantly than she'd ever gone anywhere before.  "Whatever these rings are, you don't need them.  You have it all, on your own."

He looked briefly away from her, caught between the cool shade of the chapel and the shrill brightness of the day.  "You're wrong," he told her expressionlessly. "On my own, I have nothing."

She didn't agree, but she could understand.  "Okay, Pein."

They looked at one another, dissatisfied.  He knew he couldn't stop her opinion from mattering to him, and she knew he'd use whatever came his way, including her.  But he was getting close to something, and maybe she wanted to be there for that. 

She didn't believe, not really, but today she hoped there was some God with them, just to help life move along a little. 

* * *

 A/N: Pretty long chapter, fittingly after such a long break.  Jeez, finally the chapel/ring affair is over - I was really starting to hate it.  Does it seem to anyone else like we haven't actually discovered much here...?

For those who have concerns about PeinxKonan being pushed aside in this fic to make room for Akatsuki, I've taken them into consideration.  I'm going to try to give us more conversations, communications and moments in general with our favourite Leader and his lovely lady.

Comments, suggestions, criticism, anything at all you may want to say is welcome. :) Please and thank you!


	19. Chapter 19: Change

Pretty long chapter this time around. A couple of brief PeinKonan moments here, so enjoy and expect more to come. Anyway, no more keeping you waiting to read the actual story. Go ahead and enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 19 - Change

Itachi gained ground steadily, casting no glance behind him but nonetheless hyperaware of the hulking but surprisingly stealthy presence at his tail. The shark-nin, Kisame, he remembered; he had a good spatial and linguistic memory. The one who could crush cartilage to dust with a strategic handshake.

Whatever his intentions, Kisame seemed to be showing much patience; he wasn't trying to catch up to Itachi at all. He was just following, keeping pace at a fair distance, his mummy-wrapped blade bobbing like the personification of his sadistic personality. Itachi didn't know why he kept on going, not stopping to confront his pursuer; the only way he could really justify it to himself was that the appearance of these dangerously interesting strangers in his life at a time of self-questioning and internal turmoil felt like a dream to his overtaxed mind, or perhaps a Hell-sent temptation to uproot his place as the Uchiha heir.

He thought that the easier road, long-term, would be to never turn around, return to his clan with the door closed, fill his mind with the everyday dutiful, menial tasks until there was no room for rumination on his ultimate place in the universe (most pressingly, was this all there was?). But he despised that thought as soon as he'd thought it, and he reasoned rationally that he had better get this over with before he ended up in the Uchiha backyard without an explanation for his father.

He landed very close to that position, actually, standing in front of the perfectly trimmed hedge that surrounded the clan property. Sharp twigs poked into his spine, scratching his back through a thin coating of sweat, but even so his thorough self-training was hardly necessary to school his features into a mask of hooded smoothness in time for the less graceful arrival of Hoshigaki Kisame, already infamous in Itachi's book.

There was a smattering sound of stirred-up leaves and dust, large feet making sizeable dents in the tender spring ground.

Itachi didn't dither. "Yes?"

Kisame wore a strange expression; upon close scrutiny, Itachi thought it might be curiosity. "Are you sure the only blood you've got in your veins is Uchiha?" he asked.

To his credit, Itachi needed only a single blink to adjust to the odd question. "Entirely."

The shark ninja didn't look as if he'd expected any different answer. "I guess you'd know, wouldn't you?" He was grinning slightly, sharing in some joke that Itachi, as usual, was excluded from.

"It's probable that I would," was Itachi's cold reply. He wondered if Kisame was even thinking of blood in the genetic sense. He had very seldom seen his own blood shed - more often, it was somebody else's, most often, his opponent's. He had little experience on the loser's side to compare with, but he reflected that maybe that changed a person.

"Well, I'd be willing to bet you aren't the traditional breed of your clan," Kisame said, inexplicably smug. "Do you even possess the bloodline limit?"

"Of course," Itachi replied, his words definitely clipped by now.

"Yeah..." Kisame murmured, his voice turning into a low rumble as it quieted. "Always in the eyes, when it comes to power..." Then he grinned again, more fiercely this time. "...or in the muscle. Care to try me? With your bloodline?"

Itachi was silent. "I would take you up on that offer...if I thought you would win." There was too much sincerity, too much longing, in that response for it to be arrogance alone. Kisame knew better than to interpret it as cockiness.

He cracked his massive knuckles. "Let me convince you," he suggested.

Itachi was divided. Almost unwillingly, yet with a flash of eagerness more intense than anything he'd felt in a long time, he met the gaze of his challenger squarely. The blackness in his eyes centered on the pinpricks amid the sea of pearly white in Kisame's, and he felt the red that always hovered at the edge of his optical receptors begin to infiltrate, his psychological needs taking over.

The bloodthirsty spell disintegrated with the tap of a self-assured foot on cement and the intrusion of a third party in the vicinity. Itachi snapped back into full control, the red receding as surely as it had come. Kisame, less retiring by nature, didn't draw back an inch, but Itachi told him in a composed hiss, "Our time is finished." He had to turn, go in and face his father who now waited on the front step, but he would never look away from a potential enemy.

The thick sinews in Kisame's upper arms bulged as he flexed his biceps in a showy farewell gesture. His parting shot was yet to come, however. "You know, you're a strange sort of species, Uchiha Itachi." Itachi lost sight of his hard, lip-curling grin as he whirled and left, the bandages enwrapping his sword floating fleetingly in Itachi's vision.

He quickly scuffed away Kisame's footprints with the sole of his sandal, perhaps not necessary, but certainly prudent. He proceeded to duck immediately through the hedge, walking straight towards his father, who was looking him up and down, expression level though his eyes were snapping. I conceal my emotions better, Itachi thought, and then wondered when it had become a competition.

"Itachi," Uchiha Fugaku said. His voice had deepened since the last time Itachi had heard him speak; he was angry.

Itachi bowed, stiffly, automatically. He hoped it was as painful for his father to watch as it was for him to perform.

"You know that, as team captain, you are to make your report immediately upon your return from the mission," Fugaku said. There was no warmth, no mercy or loophole in his tone. "Where have you been?"

It was time for some things to end. "I won't answer that, Oto-san."

"Pardon?" The sharpness left no room for courtesy.

Itachi straightened abruptly, the kinks in his shoulders ironing out, staring head-on at his father. He's not my father now. He's the head of my clan. He is my judge and jury, and I have the right to remain silent. Steadily, casually, he walked by his father, skinny enough not to have to twist his body to fit into the gap between him and the compound doorway. He was not quite yet as tall as Fugaku, but almost.

He paused to enunciate clearly, "I said, I refuse to answer." Dropping all pretenses, all honorifics, he brushed past.

Once inside his bedroom, Itachi seated himself on the bed, untying his forehead protector. As fresh, cool air touched his hot forehead, he breathed in and relaxed. He knew he'd just complicated his life enormously; but he felt immeasurably lighter.

Outside, Uchiha Fugaku stared after his son, a helpless witness to change.

* * *

"Talk." This was Konan's simple command as she joined Pein in front of the chapel. He kept his eyes carefully on the heavens above, not wanting to test his own readability by meeting her gaze, which didn't waver from his face.

"You remember what you promised me," she prompted, when he was slow to answer.

He exhaled, a cover for one unexpressed emotion or another. "I don't make promises, Konan."

"That's a matter of interpretation," she told him squarely. "Again, talk."

He wasn't sure why she cowed him so much more easily than anyone else; maybe he just didn't try hard enough to resist her. At any rate, he caved. "I will tell you my plans. I just need some time to think, and create some." Not unusually, truth simmered at the top of his words but didn't quite reach the bottom of the pot. He'd made his plans already; he just needed to define them more clearly now.

"I've seen you evade answers with much more subtlety than that, so I guess I'll conclude that I believe you," Konan said reluctantly, pausing to add, "More or less." Suppressed amusement stole across his expression; he appreciated those phrases that she tacked on as half-warnings, half-reminders of her awareness to him. She expected things from him, beyond his underworld reputation.

She took a small step away from him, allowing him to go. Allowing him to leave her behind - did she trust him that much? He couldn't think that she didn't care enough to stop him; one trait he had never once seen in Konan was apathy. They shared something in common that way, although she cared out of compassion, while his reason was more often than not simple curiosity.

He shot her one careful sideways glance. "If it matters to you," he said, enunciating a little less faultlessly than usual, perhaps because for once he wasn't hiding his meaning with crypticness, "there's no one else I'd tell."

She knew there wasn't really anyone in his life to tell besides her, but she also knew that every word spoken without harshness was a gift in the quagmire of cruelties the world had to offer. Knowing this, she was able to smile as she stepped back into the shadows. She frowned, however, when Pein turned back towards her; what were his intentions now?

He was very young, and even very handsome, with the lines in his forehead smoothed over and his blue eyes losing their murkiness under the pressure of bright sunlight. Just for a moment, she forgot the danger of being with him and the unforeseeable consequences of wanting to be with him, and when he extended one arm towards her, she reached back without thinking.

"Come with me," he said, enticing her, tempting himself even as he looked down at their intertwined hands with consternation. He had never realized they'd gotten this far. But he drew her level with him before releasing her anyway.

They walked together, and it was like an interlude, a breather between fights, with time to heal and strengthen and say farewells. The future was lost ahead, but whatever was in store could wait to be found.

Maybe life wasn't going anywhere yet. Maybe they could all use a break.

* * *

Konoha was a nice town for a casual stroll. Better than Amegakure, Konan thought; it didn't rain constantly in Rain, but on the days when the sun was truly out, it never shone as brightly as it did here. Konoha's scenery seemed to react naturally to that brightness, too - the people, the houses, the dust on the streets complemented the sunlight, becoming more coloured, more animated. You had to look hard here to see the vestiges of poverty and low morale that were so glaringly plain in Rain. She swallowed; lately it seemed like all her reflections came back to her past.

They eventually broke free of the orderly cluster of roads and homes, which were pleasant but closed-in, to meet a sight that should have been expected, but somehow wasn't.

Pein's gaze slid rapidly up and down the flat sides of the rectangular building, its size emphasized by the amount of empty ground surrounding it. The grass was scabbed and trampled, but lush green nevertheless. The structure itself was dull, drab in colour and shape, but it gave off an air of solidity and community. Still, Pein knew that for many young people, it was equivalent to death in a box.

It had lots of windows. _To let the light in. _

Konan was staring openly. "The Konoha Ninja Academy," she said, frankly astonished. It reminded her of how far she was from Rain.

It was a much bigger and more comprehensive facility than Amegakure's, though Pein knew he was biased, not having enjoyed his years at that academy very much. Were shinobi everywhere alike? Tools, they were called, even amongst themselves. It wasn't an exaggeration, either; they were used by their village, taking the wounds and scars and death for one more minute of peace.

They were tough everywhere; they had to be. They were disciplined everywhere; that was part of tradition, part of survival. But they weren't the same, any more than they were really tools, in their hearts. Pein glanced surreptitiously down at his ring; for some reason, he didn't want Konan knowing the direction of his thoughts now. These rings appeared to be simple tools, purposeless trinkets; but they weren't. They were more, and perhaps they'd found their way to certain shinobi who also wanted to be more. More had been a primary goal for him for a long time.

"Does Uchiha Itachi attend here?" Konan wanted to know. "He can't be much older than the graduating age."

"He's a special case," Pein answered crisply. That much was obvious.

It looked as if it was an off day for the academy; there was no noise from students, no movement. A solitary rope swing in the corner of the grounds swayed desolately back and forth, buffeted by the spring wind. Pein had a sudden childish urge to sit down and swing, pumping his legs hard until he could jump off and fly out, airborne by pure momentum, no Chakra involved.

He wondered if the academy had needed to be rebuilt after the Kyuubi attack. It was fairly close to the centre of town; it had probably escaped the bulk of the damage. Konoha was a nice place - today, in the softness of the afternoon, it didn't seem like a likely target for a demon's wrath. Pein wished it had attacked Rain instead; it was a strange thing to wish upon anyone, much less his own home, but it just might have headed off the events that changed his life.

They retreated back into the ordinary streets, and the first thing that assaulted Pein was two sensations, both extremely disconcerting. The first was his perception of a vaguely familiar, hot, _tainted_ Chakra, filling his brain with a stench of festering power, and the second froze him into place - a dangerously high concentration of killer intent.

It was so strong, too strong to be just one; multiple killer intents. It was enough to make a lesser ninja shrivel up inside their own blood, yet Pein was unaffected besides a minor stiffening. It was inexplicable - unless it wasn't aimed at him. His eyes keenly followed the faces of passers-by, and they were glaring at something to his upper right, each glower causing a spike in the refracted murderous thirsts he was feeling.

He turned to his right, squinting up against the sun. His gaze encountered a small but thick foliage of trees, bordering on the grounds of the ninja academy, and balancing cheekily on one branch was the slim outline of a young boy. Pein raised a hand to shade his eyes, the boy's features becoming easier to make out in the shelter of shadows. Spiky, mussed blond hair, big sparkling blue eyes with faint whisker marks on each cheek, skinny legs swinging through the air contentedly.

Pein blinked, the only expression of incredulous disbelief that he would offer. This imp was the recipient of all that killer intent? He felt Konan shift behind him, unsure of what was going on and always impatient to understand. She must have felt something out of whack, even if she couldn't pinpoint it exactly as he could.

The boy in the tree caught his eye and grinned, a splitting smile full of white tooth and irrepressible good nature. "Hey, mister," he said, in the loud, high voice of a cocky youngster before puberty, "are you a ninja?"

Pein found his tongue and settled for the truth. "Yes."

The boy's grin widened, which Pein hadn't previously thought possible. "Cool!" Bony elbows and knees stuck out in awkward formations as the child edged inwards on the branch, reaching the trunk of the tree and shimmying easily down it. He hopped onto solid ground, taking a bold step towards Pein. A particularly strong whiff of killer intent made Pein wonder how the kid was still standing.

"I'm gonna be the greatest ninja ever, and then I'm gonna become Hokage and everyone will respect me. That's my way of the ninja!" The boy clenched one fist at his side, carefree smile giving way to a look of brazen, shining determination. Pein had never met anyone who showed their emotions so freely. Perhaps that in itself was enough to make everyone hate you.

"Do you go to the Academy?" Konan asked, reminding Pein of her presence. Her voice was kind, animated, a smile playing around her lips. She was good with children.

He looked past Pein to see her, and smiled more tentatively. "Yeah."

Pein had been taking advantage of the lull in attention being paid to him to probe the boy more closely. He had an exceptional amount of Chakra - it was all over the place, just barely controlled, but it was strong and explosive and seemed like too much for one tiny body. As Pein sifted through the simple layers, he also found a second type of energy intermingled with the first; this was the tainted Chakra he'd sensed earlier. It was dark and blazing, and left traces of shuddering power in the atmosphere it pervaded.

Suddenly its familiarity hit him with a blow of enlightenment. He knew where he'd sensed this before, though it had been a few years ago now. In Rain, on the playground, alone with scratched, stinging kneecaps - the Kyuubi.

It would explain the hatred that seemed to follow this boy. But why would the Kyuubi's power be contained inside an inexperienced child?

Pein dropped into a crouch, falling to eye level with the boy. With a concealed hand seal, he created a thin but effective invisible Chakra shield around the two of them, blocking out the waves of murderous intentions. The boy started and glanced around him, momentarily stunned by the much-lightened ambience. It confirmed Pein's suspicions; he was so used to the perpetual killer intent that he no longer differentiated it from normalcy. Pein felt a thrill of pity and disgust at the thought that any child could live that way.

Judging from the age he seemed to be, the kid could have been a newborn during the Kyuubi attack. He'd heard of life-exchange jutsus that could... but would any defender of Konoha ever commit such an act?

"Have you lived here all your life?" Pein asked.

The boy's smile broadened as he nodded, though his innocent eyes were clouded with confusion. It was likely the first time anyone had taken any kind of non-malicious interest in him.

Konan was watching attentively from the sideline, as she did so often with Pein. She was struck by the strange physical resemblances between the child and the man; one face so open and naïve, the other so closed and cynical, but the hair shot up with a life of its own on both sides, and those two mesmerizing pairs of blue eyes were one another's equal. It was like an older brother chastening his younger sibling - Konan smiled involuntarily at the image.

Pein was struggling to stay objective to make a clinical examination of this energetic specimen. But he could picture the jutting ribs behind the baggy T-shirt and feel the hurt behind that childlike optimism, because he'd known it too. And underneath it all, there was that pulsing, demonic power that shook the foundations of Pein's soul.

After a momentary period of deliberation, he reached carefully into the pocket of his robe, feeling for the coin he had received from a nice lady what seemed like a lifetime ago. He had never wanted to spend it before, always thinking that he should use it in as well-intentioned a way as the elderly woman had given it to him. He could steal, kill, hit below the belt, but he never failed to return favours.

He pulled out the gold sliver, dulled by its time spent inside a dark, damp fold of fabric. He turned it toward the sun for a moment so it could regain its shine before holding it out to the boy. The honest, troubled blue eyes flickered from his face to his hand, and then the thin arm shot out to carefully take the coin. Pein felt those small fingers accidentally brush his palm as they lifted the insignificant weight from him, and he winced.

The boy held the coin between grimy index finger and thumb, gazing at it with simplistic rapture. Then he folded it into one firm fist, and another glad smile plastered itself over his ruddy cheeks. "Thank you!" he said, and his sincerity was impossible to doubt.

Pein stood, releasing the shield that had protected them both. The boy's shoulders sunk a little, but the mischievous twinkle didn't fade from his eyes, and neither did the unashamed gratefulness and admiration in his look as he watched Pein. It made Pein uncomfortable; he had never had such an expression aimed at him before, and he wasn't sure he deserved it.

Impulsively he rested a hand in the boy's wild blond hair for a moment before looking to Konan. "Let's go," he said, and she nodded, her face full of wonder and pleasure as she gazed upon him.

"That was really nice of you, Pein," she complimented him as she rejoined his side. "I didn't know you had it in you." It struck her how very seldom Pein had ever been praised, despite his proficiency in so many areas. It attached additional importance to her blunt words and their accompanying smile.

A blush was too much to hope for, but he did look up at the sky, not meeting her eyes. "He earned it," he said quietly, deeply. She watched him for a few seconds, then placed a hand briefly on his shoulder, her smile not fading in the least.

She craned her neck backwards and caught a glimpse of a short figure behind her, waving vigorously. She waved back.

* * *

A/N: I had that last sequence stuck in my head for a while, and it was great to finally get it out. Anyway, hopefully I didn't make you wait too excruciatingly long for this one - just over a month, that's not too long, is it? Yeah...sorry.

I discovered that I really like writing scenes between Itachi and his father. It's such a complicated, layered relationship - like, a love-hate thing but deeper than that, and they both understand so much, yet so little about each other. Fun fun. Speaking of Itachi, I wish Kishimoto would hurry up and tell us what he's been hiding from us about Itachi for so long. It's bugging me and it makes me feel like I'm writing him all wrong. Great, _another _way for my story to be AU. Nah, I'm not bitter about it. Just impatient.

If I stop babbling now, will you review? :P Thanks for reading!


	20. Chapter 20: Segregation

This...is not a very good chapter, in either writing or content. Just so you, you know, know. But it's kind of important to the rest of the story, so you may want to read it anyway.

* * *

Chapter 20 - Segregation

"Where's Kisame?" Konan wondered. It wasn't a brilliant inquiry, but this time of twilight, when the world seemed caught in guilty uncertainty between night and day, seemed appropriate for questions. Besides, Pein being Pein, he might actually know.

No such luck, or skill, whichever you believed in more. "He'll find us, if he chooses to," Pein said. His voice had no inflection in it, no way of telling whether he hoped that Kisame would choose to or not. This kind of complete monotony usually indicated serious, focused thought, or so Konan had deduced.

Pein was standing beside a tree with drooping, dark leaves that resembled stubby-fingered hands brushing the air in vain, searching for a grip on something. His body was half in, half out of its shade, so the sunless shadow on the right side of his face was heavier, more lined than the evening's waning light on the left side, which was simply a greyish haze cupping his cheek and nose. His right eye looked black.

Konan noticed that he wasn't leaning against the tree; he never did. She wanted to push him into it, see if she could tilt his centrally balanced axis a little, but she didn't stir. He made her impulses so much stronger.

She shifted her back on the boulder she was resting against, scratching her knee absentmindedly with one hand and swiping her knuckles through the dry grass with the other. Everything had seemed drier than usual since she'd left Amegakure; somehow, it made her sad. Wetness, lushness, even downpour was so much better for expressing emotions.

Pein approached her suddenly, his legs folding fluidly under him as he dropped to the ground in a cross-legged position. His movements were very smooth, even for a ninja. With his robe draped on the ground behind him rather than over his legs, she could see his thin, bare ankles and the tight, wiry muscles in his calves. She smiled slightly in amusement when she found herself thinking that her weight was probably around equal to his - he was very light-boned.

He ignored the smile, hands curling into passive fists on his thighs. "Konan," he said, as if feeling that he needed to gain even more of her attention, "what would you say if..." He cut off abruptly, so curtly that it was almost like he'd never meant to go any further. But then he blinked, slowly, once.

"I'm not going to make this hypothetical," he continued, abandoning his original game plan. "It isn't a suggestion. It's a decision." Then he stopped, yet again. The words were hard, uncooperative - this was what happened when you started wishing for someone's approval.

Konan tried to mimic his attitude of perpetual complacency. "Whenever you're ready." His eyes snapped into hers before settling back into their usual brilliance, and she smiled encouragingly, tucking a strand of indigo hair behind her ear.

"It's obvious that the rings have a connection," Pein began rationally. "There have been too many coincidences for there to have actually been any."

"In other words, supernatural," Konan supplied evenly. Sometimes she felt like an amateur interpreter trying to translate for a linguistics expert with Pein. She was getting good at the poker face manoeuvre, though.

He gave her a sharp look, determining if she was mocking him or not. "Perhaps. At any rate, you and I, and various other men, have been somehow drawn together, and an idea has been forming in my mind." He didn't give a dramatic pause; he simply continued, as was his style. "I want to unite the ring-bearers as a front, an organization. They are the best shinobi of their kind; they have no purpose, no present occupation, and together they would represent a cause unlike any other."

Konan couldn't help it - she let out a scoff of distaste, an explosive cough from the bottom of her lungs that made him blink. "A 'cause unlike any other'? You mean a criminal organization. Those men, those great shinobi, are all underground overlords or something!"

He looked mildly amused at her improvised terminology. "You're being melodramatic, Konan."

"I'm telling it like it is, Pein!" She couldn't keep herself from being upset - he never joked, so there was no hope. "If you disagree, then tell me about these men."

"I didn't say I disagreed," he started, then stopped, realizing she wasn't in the mood for any philosophical jousting. "I can hardly tell you anything more than their names. There's Kakuzu, a Waterfall nin; Zetsu, a very interesting character, Kisame, Sasori, Orochimaru and Uchiha Itachi. And you, of course."

Perversely, she felt flattered that he included her so easily, as if she were a given. She also resented his implication that he expected her to agree, however. "Orochimaru? That oily-haired snake?" she demanded. She leaned forward as she grew more heated, and by now Pein could feel the breath behind her words on his own lips. "And Uchiha Itachi! He's a child! Are you going to tear him away from his whole clan?"

Pein refused to concede any kind of defeat by moving away, but he did arch his neck backwards to put some distance between their faces. "I assure you, it wouldn't be difficult," he said calmly.

Nearly banging his chin in the process, Konan shot to her feet, stung to the core by his cold, insensitive retort. "I thought you had some principles, Pein! I thought, sure, he's done some bad stuff, but he compensates for it somehow, right? And then when you were so nice to that poor kid. I can't believe how naïve I was! I thought you were some kind of hero - but you just want to use people! I know they used you, but I thought you were - you were - better..." she trailed off, blustering, shaking with what felt, if possible, like an even more personal betrayal than Hanzo's blatant abuse had.

Pein was now standing too. A muscle twitched in his jaw, the only flexible piece of that blazingly rigid body.

"You are naïve, Konan," he said harshly. He was much quieter than she was, but it was just as much an outburst for him; he fought for control of his tongue and his emotions. "You pitied me - admit it. There was respect, but there was also pity. I was a victim; therefore, I could be excused for not constantly obeying the law or being a model citizen."

His nostrils flared, and she saw flashes of white lightning rebounding inside the concentric circles of his eyes. She thought of the dead soldier and her mouth went dry with terror. If he hated her, there was no escape.

"The truth, Konan, which you've asked me for so many times, is this: I have no excuse. I have no defence. I am what I chose for myself, nothing more noble or repulsive than that. As I've told you, I neither want nor need your condemnation or your absolution. Everything was a factor, evidently - you were a factor. But I alone am the biggest factor."

They were back at the beginning of the vicious circle, at a loss. She thought it must be too late, but she reached out anyway, groping frantically.

"If I pitied you, it's for a reason! I could help you, Pein," she insisted, stricken. "You could change-"

"If I wanted to change, I would do it without help. But you're missing what I've been trying to enforce all along - these are my principles." She wondered what overzealous god had given Pein the combined gifts of agility and speech - he didn't need the ability to physically crush when he could effortlessly spin a word web of silky, fast-acting poison.

Her face hardened even as she felt the urge to cry. "I understand," she said, her voice lowered.

He nearly smiled, but it was a hateful almost-smile, a cruel twist to such an elegant, eloquent mouth. "No, you don't." Despite what she thought she could see, it wasn't effortless. "Leave, Konan, before you create more regrets."

Her answering smile was equally bitter. "I've caused you enough already, haven't I, Pein?"

In that moment, they both took stock of what they'd just expressed, and a silent, mutually dissatisfying agreement was made. He tightened his lips together to prevent another shot, or an apology, from slipping out. She saw this, and with a heavy breath that was almost tremulous, she spun on her heel and walked away. Her gait was loose, quick, unwilling.

When she was completely invisible to him and he could no longer sense any wisp of her Chakra, he sat back on the ground. It seemed more uncomfortable than it had before. He'd never even gotten the chance to tell her the name of his idea - Akatsuki.

He planted his palm in the centre of the solid, heterogeneous boulder, still warm from the pressure of her back, and levered all his weight into it. It didn't budge.

He thought back to the dream, and wished for another raging flood of lava.

* * *

There was a huge margin of difference, he thought, between the extent of feeling that you could attach to the physical and to the emotional. There was only so much your body could sense - smell, touch, sound, sight, taste. But emotions were all those and worse - a type of heaven less easily taken away, and a kind of torture more difficult to bear.

He'd finally given up trying to immerse himself in the physical; no one was that one-dimensional, and avoiding the issue never worked. So he'd now stopped his pacing, stopped his purposely loud scuffing in the dirt, and he was lying on the ground, arms folded almost casually over his stomach. His legs were stretched straight out in front of him, and he was perfectly still except for the slight rising and falling motion of his chest in its silent breathing.

He was wedged between about four different trees, having found the exact position that would allow him to extend his body to its full length without having to curl up. He doubted it was possible to beat this discomfort, though - the grass was damp, the twigs thorny and sharp, the rustle of leaves and squeaks of nearby creatures jarring, the breeze chilly at this time of night, and still it wasn't enough.

He wondered idly if there existed any physical sensation that could entirely take over a person, obliterating every other emotion or thought. Even pain was not so potent, was it? Experiencing pain was always just unpleasant multitasking, or so it seemed to Pein. It could kill you, it could modify you, but it could not swallow up every single part of you.

It was always_ about_ emotion. Emotion always _won_ . Emotion was _absolutely invincible_ .

Invincibility...that was the lifelong goal, wasn't it? But it was not the same as immortality...

Pein blew a breath out toward the stars. He felt the air leave his lips, but it was invisible, and gone with the wind. He refrained from squinting, instead opening his eyes wider, trying to see beyond those scintillating golden spots, trying to catch a glimpse of the next universe. But so far, it remained more untouchable than that one breath, just a tiny, nearly meaningless current inside a tornado.

_There are some things I hate about the way I am_ . Pein suddenly shifted violently, flipping over onto his stomach in a flash, and then pushing himself into a half-sitting position. He could admit, but he didn't like it; he wasn't happy with his life right now, or ever, and there was no future like this. He was a genius, but he had no real outlet for his intelligence. He'd gathered an impressive repertoire of skills over his relatively short life, but he couldn't hold on to anything that wasn't a technique. It was all theory, and he knew his conclusions were right, but he had no convincing proof.

Konan; one of the many casualties of that little phrase "couldn't hold on to anything that wasn't a technique". Under the circumstances, there was no other way things could have played out. He should have just left her after their first meeting in the alleyway - he didn't want to have changed her in any way. In many ways she was less easily influenced than he was, and more resistant to the things she witnessed and did. But he was also more powerful than she was, and now that he could recall every word of their last conversation, he was afraid some of his innately damaged personality might have rubbed off on her.

But no - those opinions had all been purely Konan's. Nobody else could state them so bluntly, lay them out at his feet and kick them up into his face. Nobody else could hurt him enough to provoke him into a reaction. She was gone, but at least it was proof - proof that Konan was still Konan, would always stay Konan, and proof that Pein would always be Pein as long as he lived. It wouldn't be an ideal existence, maybe, but whether or not this life was all there was, he would make use of it in any way that came by. He would make himself worthwhile, and he would do whatever meant something for him, regardless of what anyone thought.

Regardless of what she thought.

He finally stood, his trained legs locking into place to support him without any trace of soreness. He was who he was, and she was who she was - if those two were irreconcilable, then so be it.

He clenched his right fist until he could feel his bones trying to burst through the skin. His knuckles were so white they glowed in the dark, and balancing just above the one on his thumb was the ever-present Zero, its thin gold band shining dully. This was what he'd been preparing himself for, and now that he was free of all ties, he was ready.

He lifted Zero to eye level, holding it just a few inches away from his face. He fixed his gaze on the kanji with all his considerable concentration, and a number of soundless images flashed through his mind. He couldn't tell what exactly they portrayed, but they all led him back to one thought - _Akatsuki_ .

Akatsuki. And beauty and strength and power and domination and worth and success and fearlessness and evil and greatness and _home_ ...

An ink cloud seemed to seep through his vision, and all his surroundings stuck out in stark black and white. But in a moment, the colours returned, and the mental motion picture was gone.

All right, so he wasn't really free of all ties. So it was most likely impossible for the human consciousness to exist without ties. So starting new ties was dangerous and rash. So he'd done it anyway.

So be it.

* * *

A/N: Gah, it sounded even worse after re-reading it. At least it's relatively short, so you didn't have to suffer the pain of too-much-Pein-thought-processing for long. I'm really sorry; I know it's boring, and inadequate, and not anything you or I wanted it to be, but...I don't know. Something needed to be written. You know the feeling?

I've steeled myself for criticism on this one, so lay it on me! I know it's a lot of trouble to leave a detailed, meaningful review, but I know every reader out there can make the effort, and believe me, actually thinking about it and trying to pinpoint certain things about an author's writing that you like/dislike is very beneficial for you. At least, it has been for me. But seriously, you guys are great - I can always count on you to leave me some great comments. Sometimes I glance over other authors' review sections, and I feel so gratified when I compare the kinds of reviews I receive to the ones they do - because you people really know how to express yourselves in a way that helps me out. Thank you - very, very much.

I'm not making much sense, am I? Oh well. Sorry, again, and thank you so much, again!


	21. Chapter 21: Foreplay

I like this chapter, I guess. And there's no doubt that it's important. So read it. And please review! Last chapter was the only one so far that I got less than 10 reviews for. I mean, I deserved it...but it still sucked... so help me achieve 300 reviews this time around!

July 6 was my one-year anniversary here on FanFiction. It's great to be part of this community, and thanks to all you great people who have made my time here so amazing so far! All the heartfelt best from LutraShinobi. :)

* * *

Chapter 21 - Foreplay

He couldn't feel the wind through the mask on his face, but when he experimentally protracted a few Chakra wires, they bent under the air's whiplash.

Kakuzu, the Waterfall nin, was pursuing a bounty. He wasn't quite sure who, or what, it was, but he knew it would be fruitful. There was no other assumption to be made when he could feel his rarely-stirred anticipation jingling like freshly minted coin, or when his strong, pliable fingers itched with adrenaline, stemming from the burning in his left middle finger, more specifically from the Northern Star.

It vaguely bothered the wayward ninja that he had begun to refer to the ring in terms of a name; it didn't rightfully own one. But it had been a constant, subconscious nagging since he'd slipped it dishonestly on, and the sensations it gave him were unlimited and impossible to ignore. This burning, for example; it was a bone-deep ache, searing through his knuckles like hot, un-crippling arthritis.

He'd considered throwing the thing away. But then he couldn't; it might be valuable, after all.

It, or something, was spurring him on now, towards the biggest bounty he'd never laid eyes on. He lowered his mask a little, bulbous green eyes glowing, to let the wind brush his cheeks. This was how it should always feel, homing in on the target, tasting the wealth ahead.

For Kakuzu, there was no question about it - greed was a very pleasurable feeling.

* * *

He could feel the wind cupping his face in rough, motherly hands, bathing him in cool relief after a life of heat.

Everything in Suna was counterproductive, Sasori decided. The Kazekage's regime was oppressive and hypocritical, squishing creative liberties while the leader himself experimented with demons and unborn babies. It was too hot to train properly, too barren to do anything else.

Sasori was positive that if anyone, besides that intriguing stranger, had ever discovered what he'd done to that girl in the wasteland, he would have been executed. This embittering knowledge made his seed of a soul shrivel up further, twisting inside him as it tried to grab hold of some root.

He hated everything about sand - the colour, the texture, the sting when it got into his eyes and mouth. But when he died, he wanted to be buried in the stuff from head to foot on some sunless beach where nobody swam. It would be the only thing remotely like peace in this world.

Of course, he didn't intend to die anytime soon.

The Virgin was calling to him, just as that girl's red, red lips had. It was just a ring, but he would follow it for now. He was comfortable with the supernatural, more so than with all that was real and attainable.

He had brought his favourite puppets with him, among them the hideous Hiruko, the child of his genius. He leaned against these marionettes when he slept, spoke softly to them when he wanted to clear some of the overwhelmingly fresh air from his lungs. They were his family now.

No one would miss him except Chiyo-baa-sama. But she would most likely be dead by the time he returned.

* * *

He never paid any undue attention to the wind. He had two voices of his own; he didn't need a third to whisper contradictions in his ear.

Zetsu was never alone; he had his own doubly substantial conscious, and as long as there was a single blade of grass within a mile, he had an unconditional companion. The communication was not important, only the connection. People never understood that, which was why he preferred plants.

So, Zetsu didn't trouble himself with loneliness. Ever since he'd obtained the Black Tortoise, however, that interesting artefact from a dull pub, he had begun to feel that he was carting around yet another sentient being; not human, not vegetable, but nonetheless present. He didn't like its communication method; wrenchingly unsubtle, when compared to plants.

The fire in his fingers was reminiscent of gripping a hot stem in his hand, sapping its sunlight for a moment but not tearing it from the ground. This was not an unpleasant feeling, but it didn't end or fade, and it constantly disrupted his peculiar process of mental photosynthesis.

At the moment he was appeasing this foreign ring, following its direction. The trees and flowers seemed to encourage him in this aim, swaying tranquilly as he passed. He had the wind to thank for that, he supposed.

This ring was odd, but he thought that it must belong to some forgotten division of nature.

* * *

Two figures approached Konoha's gates from opposite angles in the dead of night, with equal stealth but differing styles. One slunk along, coiling into the shadows and then striking out like lightning around street lights and domestic areas - a lurking. The other moved steadily, in a fluid, fast crouch, soundless and camouflaged by the strategic fall of darkness between moonbeams - a creeping. Both were a coming.

Orochimaru and Uchiha Itachi acknowledged one another wordlessly, then turned to greet their third-party observer. The moon briefly outlined two Leaf forehead protectors and one lone Mist.

Kisame grinned, straightening from his careless slouch against the gate. "Fancy meeting you two here."

Orochimaru smirked in return; his lips were paler than his skin in this light. His face appeared nearly translucent, bringing to mind images of the bone and flesh beneath the thin outer layer.

Itachi didn't smile, but the black void of his eyes slowly filled with a wild scarlet.

* * *

Konan forced herself to pay attention to geography for once as she moved. She timed every second that grew to a minute that grew to an hour, and no detail in her surroundings was missed. It was caution to the point of obsession; and that was Pein.

That was the problem, maybe. Obsession. That focus, that riveting concentration in his blue eyes at all times, that paranoia that he'd adapted to so effectively. It was unsettling to know that you were inside his radar, always watched, always listened to. It was like she was _controlled_ when she was near him - just like he seemed to contain the environment, maintain it according to his wishes. It was impossible, but he was so powerful. So obsessive.

She knew it wasn't his fault. He tried to convince her that it was, but she always felt so darn _bad _ when she thought about his early years. Those thoughts made her never want to go back to Rain. Those thoughts made her want to cut out half of her heart and give it to him, so that he could feel a bit of warmth and love and _wantedness _ for once, and so that she could take half of his heart and understand just a little better what he went through.

She didn't have much warmth or love left anymore, though. And he didn't want her heart.

Once immersed in full-fledged reflection, she'd forgotten very quickly to keep track of her travelling, and now she was out of the woods. The trees were behind her, but more night lay ahead. There was a grating street under her feet, suddenly jarring her knees. She came gradually to realize that she was hungry, tired, angry and sad and altogether not in her best condition.

All that stuff about shinobi and withstanding the elements and beating the odds and fighting till death and resisting weakness and keeping on? Load of crap.

She didn't feel strong now. She didn't feel like someone who had trained for years and years to reach this level of physical and mental fitness. She didn't feel like what she was doing and what she stood for was right. She didn't think Pein did, either, from those evenings on the road when he would lie on his back just for the sake of custom and follow the slow, slow movement of constellations through the sky, and never close his eyes.

All of us shinobi, Konan thought, carry a lot on our minds. If she and Pein were into those dangerous affairs of thinking a bit deeper than most, that was their problem.

She almost ran into something solid - a bench. She stopped just in time and took it in, senses functioning on autopilot. She wasn't really _looking _ at it, though, and so she was startled into drawing a kunai when someone said, "Looking for something?" It was a rough, uncouth voice, coming from a throat that was used to shouting, or at least exclaiming loudly.

"No," she answered automatically, almost snappishly. Her gaze fell on a form that was sprawled across the bench, taking up all the space. One bare arm was thrown carelessly over the back rail, holding the figure halfway upright. The other hand toyed mindlessly with a small, gleaming amulet resting against a ruddy neck, tiny sprouts of chest hair revealed by the low neckline of a loose shirt.

The head was facing away from her, but the voice was still going. Definitely male, and adult. "Waiting for something?"

"No," she said again, more cautiously. She wished he'd turn to look at her; she felt kind of stupid craning over him to get a glimpse of his face.

He let out a little half-sigh, half-grunt of impatience. "...geez, then. Wandering around pointlessly in the middle of the night for _absolutely no freaking reason at all_ ?" His tone turned bitingly sarcastic on the last words, and her hackles rose. You didn't talk to a stranger like that, like you knew all about them and their business. This stranger didn't know the half of what she'd been through or what she expected to put herself through in the future. She would _not _ become that useless, frightened outcast again. She would not allow herself to be too weak for any challenge.

She plunked herself down on the meagre width of space not taken up on the bench by him, pushing into him so that his legs slid off the side. "_Excuse _ me." She found it amusing that all that was needed to bring her back to life was a bit of unfounded antagonism. She returned her kunai surreptitiously to its holster; maybe he hadn't even noticed that it had been pulled out.

He cursed indelicately and swung his whole body around in a very swift, graceful motion so that he was sitting normally next to her. She drew in a sharp breath at his fast, agile movement; only ninja moved like that. She hoped she hadn't gotten herself into anything too brutal - she knew what temperamental shinobi could be like when it came to push or shove, because she was one herself to some extent.

He finally looked at her. She was smiling competitively in readiness for him, but it faded a little at the sight. It wasn't that he was hideous; no, he was quite handsome, actually. Deep, intelligent eyes of a peculiar but lovely lavender colour, silver hair greased and neatly combed straight back, thin eyebrows, thin lips and an elegant, unbroken nose. A very hard jaw, however. But it wasn't any of that; no, it was just that in spite of everything...well, in spite of the gentle lavender, his eyes were not in the least gentle, in spite of the neat hair he was not in the least neat, in spite of the attractiveness he still seemed dangerous.

He was like...a vampire. He was like...unrefined sugar. The whole effect screamed "delinquent".

"Well darn, blue hair," he said bluntly, and she was sure that her first impressions of him had been as right as they were wrong.

"That's right," she deadpanned, steeling herself for something or anything. If he pushed, she would shove back.

He lifted his arm casually and slung it over the back of the bench again - over the back of _her _ part of the bench. She didn't really think it was because he was hitting on her; it just seemed like something he'd do if he felt like it. The next question, however, made her wonder. "Are you a virgin?"

She gasped, grabbing his arm and wrenching it down so that it fell into his lap. He stared at his elbow as if he couldn't believe she'd touched it, and she stared at _him. _ At length, nonplussed and slightly embarrassed, but still outraged, she demanded, "What was _that?_ "

"A question." His reply was brusque, uncaring. "But hell, never mind if it gets your blue panties in a twist." He was very difficult to read; his expression changed constantly, from annoyance to boredom to amusement to cynicism. None of them looked like very strong emotions, which was befitting to his laid-back, lack-a-daisy manner.

She looked to the front again. There was a moment of silence. "...I don't wear blue panties."

He snorted in unmistakable mirth. "Who the hell cares?"

She laughed softly too. It was strange; the first person she'd laughed with in days was some random stranger sitting on a bench who wanted to know if she was a _virgin. _

She clasped her hands in her lap, looking for all the world like an overgrown, reticent schoolgirl. She felt even worse now that she was still; the hunger was gnawing at her insides, helped along by varying stages of regret, irritation and grief over a dozen tragedies. "Apathy must be nice." She didn't really mean it, though she could have wished to at that moment. But then again, this guy seemed to have nothing weighing on his shoulders at all, and he didn't seem happy. Satisfied, maybe, but not happy.

He spread his arms over the back of the bench yet again, tilting his head back as if to stargaze. But he was looking at her, his pupils aimed in her direction through slitted eyelids. "It's better than hell." She didn't know what it was about him; he seemed hopelessly untrustworthy, but his every action and word bespoke honesty. There was nothing clandestine or mysterious about him, and she could almost welcome that after Pein.

He started talking again. "Behind us, this building's a temple." She turned her neck slightly to get a look. It was just like all the other structures she'd seen in this town; shabby and greyish. "Stupid monks threw me out. Going to hell, all of them. Every last sucker." He was very matter-of-fact about it.

She didn't want to play the game of gab, suddenly. She just wanted to curl up and sleep on this bench; but that would be a bad idea with some weirdo ninja next to her, and a defeat. She said nothing. Why had she even started listening to him? He certainly didn't seem to listen much to her in return.

"Do you believe in Jashin-sama?"

She cast him a tired glance. She didn't want to have this discussion with him; she didn't even know what the discussion was about. "I don't know. If you mean God...I still don't know."

He opened his mouth to say something, but then he seemed to think better of it. His lips curled up into a mediocre grin. "What do you believe in then?" She didn't know how he managed to sound like he meant the question, since he'd already obviously judged her already just like he seemed to have judged everybody else, but he did.

"I..." _don't know, _ she was about to say, but then the absurdity of the statement hit her. She didn't know what she believed in? What was she living for? How could she not know, how could she have not learned anything so far? No wonder she was so exhausted and starved and spiritless, if she was that far gone. She'd lectured Pein on principles, and she didn't even recognize her own.

It was his fault. She'd known what was right before she met him, but he'd messed with her heart and her head and had messed her up. He'd taught her a very important lesson: that she didn't know anything. It hurt, that lesson. It hurt a lot. It was hard to take.

_But it's not his fault. _

It _was. _ It was him and the circles in his blue eyes. The piercings all over his face, proving nothing. The hate that he held inside, and the pain that he wouldn't let her into. Zero on his right thumb. The people he met. The church, his church, with dust on the altar. His atheism. His humanity and lack of it. His sensitivity. His genius. His survival. His smile and lack of it.

_But it's not his fault. It's you. It's your parents, and Fusao, and Hanzo. It's Rain and rain. It's birth and it's life and then it's death. It's the strangers who sit on benches and talk to you when you don't want to be talked to._

But it wasn't really any of that, not so much as it was him. She didn't believe in those things much anymore. She didn't blame him and she didn't hate him. She didn't think it was his fault. But she...

She believed in Pein.

"I know. I know," she said out loud, and the silver-haired vampire didn't even give her a funny look, though he did start at the raw earnestness in her declaration.

She stood up quickly, alert all over again. She took a couple of steps away, then hesitated and turned around. She walked confidently back toward the bench and stuck out her right hand.

He stared at the ring around her middle finger for a moment before reaching out readily to grasp her hand in his. His fingers were larger than hers, but they weren't extraordinarily large. She gave them a good shake and said firmly, "I'm Konan."

That grin reappeared. "Hidan."

He was leaning forward on the bench, limpid lavender eyes looking into hers. He felt like a friend at that moment, that odd type of friend that you'd never really been close to but still missed, and she released his hand with reluctance. She didn't like him much, and she'd even admit that she was a bit afraid of him and the way he didn't seem to care about anything. But there was always something special about meeting someone so unique that you knew you wouldn't ever meet anybody like them again.

"It's been a pleasure. And thanks." It was inadequate, but appropriate. Awkwardly, she made an excuse. "I have somewhere to be..."

He laughed outright this time, instead of that contemptuous snort of humour. "For the love of Jashin-sama, any moron with his head up his butt in hell could see that." His brilliantly white teeth glinted, and their flash was the last part of him she saw before she whirled around and bounded away, new truth bringing new energy.

The night was only getting darker, but the moon glowed brighter with each hour, and it was nearly full.

* * *

They all became aware of one another as they began to draw closer to the common destination, but it was Pein who sensed them first.

He was cross-legged on the grass in the same clearing that he'd been roaming in yesterday, and the day before that. Really, he was quite surprised that he hadn't been forced to avoid a passing ANBU team as of yet. It was dark out, the kind of darkness that you got so used to you stopped thinking of it as night. He'd been counting the hours, but he couldn't remember how long it had been since the last light.

Meditating was what he called it, this still but active exercise. It was the organization of thought in his mind and emotion in his heart, all the while retaining perfect openness and alertness to outside signals. Simple but complex - his area of expertise.

Kisame was the first he felt, possible because he was the closest, and also because he made no effort at all to mask his Chakra. _I'll have to work on that, _ Pein mused. _Then again, he is already an excellent hunter... _

He sensed Itachi and Orochimaru as well, travelling in a tight group with Kisame. Then there was another Chakra less intensely familiar, but nonetheless remembered; bitter, peculiar, Kakuzu. The Chakra that rolled in waves, Sasori's. Then, last, Zetsu's distinctly divided aura.

He discovered with mild surprise that he'd been expecting them.

* * *

A/N: Does anybody else ever feel slightly dirty...sinful...after writing/reading Hidan? It's like his badness rubs off the page, or is contagious or something. I cringed at the virginity question, but I think cutting corners with Hidan makes him out of character. Not that he wasn't OOC here. Anyway. think about it and then tell me what you think about it. Of course, you can think about telling me what you think about it first. :P

Thanks for everything. I hope I'll be here for many years to come!


	22. Chapter 22: Accumulation

This chapter isn't exactly what I wanted, but it's not _too, too _ far off the mark. This is pretty much the climax of the whole story. I think so, anyway; but I suck at that "Identify the Exposition, Rising Action, Climax" stuff. I don't really think about that while writing. Which might explain why my plots always turn out so weird.

A lot of writers/readers are gone this summer, aren't they? Funny, because I thought that there would be more updates and such during vacation, not less. Oh well, I guess most people want a break. I, however, remain obsessed. Chapter 23 is already in the works.

Enjoy!

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Chapter 22 - Accumulation 

Pein wasn't like other people who breathed in without even remembering it was air. He tasted it on the way in, tried to distinguish pure oxygen from all the other necessary pollution. He imagined suffocating and felt himself swell with replenished energy instead. He had suffered his share of unpleasant physical sensations, but in rare moments of untainted positive thinking, he sometimes thought the sole act of breathing made up for it all. Pein's feelings toward his body were ones of mingled awe, inconvenience and respect.

He rose effortlessly to his feet, and for a second his lungs felt full and powerful, with enough air to last him for years underwater. But the feeling vanished as he exhaled. One breath was the difference between life and death, but all on its own it didn't last very long.

He turned his face to Sasori, who was now standing behind him, his sideswept red hair, dark but nonetheless shocking, floating lightly around his head. He had the gentlest smile on his face, but his mature amber eyes were so blank it hurt.

"Nice wind tonight," he said evenly, "Pein." There was nearly a question mark there, as if he wondered how to address the man who stood before him, the man who had somehow commanded him here.

"Refreshing, isn't it?" Pein replied, perfectly at ease. Words often meant much more than they were, but he was comfortable with that knowledge.

"Oh, it's perfect," Kakuzu said sourly. "Now would you mind explaining what I'm doing here?" He had emerged from the trees to Pein's right, slouching and sullen. His bulbous green eyes gleamed expectantly in contradiction to his mood, however.

Pein swivelled on the spot. "I have a proposition," he said, answering Kakuzu as well as the unspoken queries of the five others now gathered around him, standing in a circle with Pein cornered in the centre. Itachi, Kisame and Orochimaru were clumped side by side, while Kakuzu kept his distance from Sasori and Zetsu meandered a little farther back than the others, obviously preferring the trees' company to theirs.

"...But before that, I believe introductions are in order," Pein continued smoothly. "As you all know, I am Pein."

"Hoshigaki Kisame," Kisame spoke up stoutly, no prompting needed. Kakuzu showed a spark of interest, and Pein wondered if Kisame merited a bounty. In any case, he decided not to shove the two together any time in the near future.

"Orochimaru," said the tall, smirking spectre next to Kisame.

"Itachi," said the Uchiha prodigy, the youngest person in the group by more than three years. He didn't look it, though. He pronounced his name coldly and detachedly, as if it were one of the more tasteless facts of life.

Pein fixed him with a penetrating gaze. _Why did you drop your prestigious surname, when you are the most promising of their generation? Why are you distancing yourself from your own clan, from those who share your blood and Sharingan? What is the nature of your suffering, Uchiha Itachi? _

Itachi was now looking to his side, showing no sign of recognizing Pein's scrutiny and focusing politely on Zetsu, the next speaker. Certainly no one could accuse the Uchiha of cultivating bad manners in their youngsters.

"I am Zetsu," said the aforementioned plant mutant. His careful, white voice was just as Pein remembered it; kept only from sounding totally robotic by those gravelly tremors in it. "_As am I_ ," added the black voice, seeming to surge up from the innards of the earth. Everyone stared at Zetsu even harder than before.

There was a pause, and Pein could feel the tension in the air as the six shinobi began to get an estimate of how capable their companions really were.

"Akasuna no Sasori," Sasori said calmly. Pein recalled that he was nineteen, and Itachi barely thirteen, and opined that shinobi education was becoming more potent than ever, releasing such disciplined skill so young. It probably wasn't working the way most Elders hoped it would, however, judging from the results. Pein had always felt, inexpressibly, that there was something unforgivable about being a shinobi even if you had the best of intentions.

Kakuzu looked impatient as he said snappishly, "Kakuzu." He obviously wanted to get down to business; because, of course, after business came money. Pein's mouth twitched indulgently.

Now came the time for speechmaking. He'd learned from experimentation, mostly on Konan, that if he spoke things precisely the way he thought them, people tended not to comprehend him very well. The language of the brain was not exactly parallel to the language of the tongue. But Pein had been thinking about this for long enough that he felt confident in his ability to speak it clearly and convincingly.

"Each of you bears a ring with a different symbol upon a different finger," he began. "You have obtained them, you have noticed them, you have felt their influence. But they are more than valuables, as you must have realized. They have established a connection between us. Strong connections are often a disadvantage among shinobi; but there is a way to turn this into an asset, rather than a liability." Pein knew the importance of being firm, knew he could not possibly admit to anything less than omniscience right now. These were dangerous men, and no weakness revealed, however small, was ever missed or discarded by experienced ninja. The only ammunition they would get, he determined, would come from him, at his will and for his purposes, and would be never be used against him.

"My proposition is this: all of you are skilled shinobi who have walked on the wrong side of the tracks for some time now. When you are gathered here, together, you can all feel the power among you and tension it creates. I propose an alliance, greater than the one that already exists. An organization, involving you, ultimately out to destroy everything unpleasant in this world. Tonight we are strangers and, to put it bluntly, enemies. By tomorrow, much can have changed between us, as much as we can change the way things are if we combine our talents. At the new dawn. Akatsuki."

There was silence, so he repeated it more loudly, the authority behind his voice and the word's meaning sending a chilly draft through the warm night breeze. "Akatsuki." In a moment, all the tension in the air had transformed to raw power.

To Pein, it felt like a long-awaited climax, the rise in emotion and action, though everything seemed to be standing still. He knew he had moved cleverly; he was sure that at least a few of the surrounding ninja had been considering attacking him, and now he had put them in a difficult position. That course of action would now be unwise, as they couldn't know whether any of the others were interested in his offer, and might object to their challenge. Violence was what prompted politics into existence, and politics in turn became violence prevention. Politics done properly, that is.

"That sounds _very_ impressive, I'm sure," Kakuzu sneered with his usual insincerity. "But if we're the organization, it sounds like you'll be the leader. I don't intend to obey you."

"You're here," Pein said simply. "You already have." He turned so that he was fully facing Kakuzu. "A part of you would perhaps like to get rid of that ring. But when you look at it, you can only think of how valuable it is." Pein stared him down until Kakuzu dropped his gaze, his eyes unwillingly seeking out the Northern Star, jutting out of his left hand like a huge, golden wart.

To everyone's surprise, Zetsu was the first to vocally accept the idea. "I would like to be a part of this." Both his 'light' and 'dark' voices spoke very slowly - perhaps double-checking with one another before expressing themselves? - Pein noticed. Zetsu looked straight across at Kakuzu, his small white eyes just as creepy and freakish as Kakuzu's glowing green ones. _"...Leader-sama_ ." The darkness in his black voice seemed to give the name a sinister humour.

Pein repressed the urge to start at the foreign title. Kisame, however, grinned. He threw his head back and laughed, revelling in the awkwardness he created with such an out-of-place sound. "Well, now that I can be sure I won't be the only person in this _Akatsuki _ with a sense of humour, I'm in. Leader-sama." He grinned directly at Pein, bold as ever.

"I'll join," Sasori said without preamble. His mouth was a straight line, rather than its customary lift of the lips. He nodded when Pein looked at him; he was sure of his goals.

Orochimaru's supercilious smirk more than made up for the absence of Sasori's smile. His eyebrows were lifted, both impressed and sceptical, and his tongue darted out thoughtfully to moisten his lips before he spoke. "It's an intriguing prospect, certainly. I believe I'd like to explore it." His contemplative tone almost completely counterbalanced the natural jeer in his voice, so he sounded nearly entirely serious. Pein saw him glance sideways at Itachi.

Kakuzu stared at the ring around Pein's finger, seemingly entranced by it, though Pein knew he had missed nothing of the conversation. Someone like Kakuzu would always be drawn to the material promises, but luckily Pein had those too.

"Whatever. I'm in for the money. I don't care about anything else." Kakuzu spoke with finality; it sounded like his life motto. And that left only one.

Pein could see Itachi fitting all the various shinobi together in his mind - how they would all coexist, how all of their eccentricities could benefit the others. Itachi was like Pein in many ways of thinking; he saw not only his own piece and those that slid into place near him, but the entire puzzle.

"I'd like some time for consideration, please."

Pein was ready for that. He knew how much hesitation thinking brought, and he had an idea that Uchiha Itachi's life was more complicated than most. "Very well. I will be waiting." He almost said, _You have twenty-four hours_ , but held down the words. Itachi didn't need a deadline.

"I doubt very much that it's necessary to tell you that you may never be home again now that you're part of Akatsuki," Pein informed them. "I suggest that you all take care of any unfinished business you may have; and by that I mean anything that could possibly interfere with your membership to the organization. You all know how I will be able to communicate with you in the future." He paused. "This order is effective immediately."

Wordlessly - professionally, Pein thought - they dispersed, even Kisame, who he presumed had nowhere to go, no ties left to sever. Then again, he supposed that everyone had their own rituals to perform before they turned to a new way of life. Because Akatsuki would be a new way of life for them - for him, too. It was so much novelty, so much promise held in his Chakra-burned, calloused hands, that he was almost afraid of it. But he wasn't afraid.

The world sometimes proved its wonder, as when seven very dangerous ninja could stand in a circle and feel no fear of each other. Pein knew he'd chosen right. Now he would prove that knowledge to everybody out there, those who defied him and those who supported him as well. Maybe this was like religion; having such absolute faith, faith not only in what you'd been taught but also faith that those teachings would someday come true in front of you.

Belief was good, and strong. But who could imagine anything beyond asking "who is God" and _knowing?_

He realized he was fizzing with pent-up adrenaline, and he jiggled his shoulders to loosen up. Then he froze.

It was something he hadn't expected to sense ever again. Paper-thin, but flexible, fluttering but steady, a pulse in his head. It crept over him and through him, bathing his skin in ticklish pinpricks, hollowing out his muscles until they became papery themselves. He had never felt anything so acutely. Not anything, _anyone._

"Pein?" The uncertainty in her voice was something that had gone unexpressed in both of them since childhood. All of a sudden he was having a flashback, standing in the schoolyard with her right behind him. And now, like then, he was seized with the same fear of turning around, of discovering it was just an illusion.

"Konan?" All of the emotion pinned on that one word nearly choked him.

In front of his eyes, as he faced away from her, the sun was rising on the horizon and day was replacing night. Sunlight was invisible most of the time, but in the earliest moments of morning, it exploded with colour. He was mesmerized by the sky, what he no longer hesitated to call beauty. He felt its pull, drawing his spirit up to the heavens regardless of its weight, and then he felt_ her_ pull. They were identical. He turned; he couldn't resist.

She was the only one who had ever shared the dawn with him.

It _was_ her. It was_ her_ . She was smiling at him; she looked a bit said, but more than anything else, relaxed. It couldn't be an illusion; his mind couldn't have conjured that smile. He wasn't familiar enough with it. But he intended to get to know it better. It wasn't a smile of pure bliss; it was a smile of happiness very well knowing that happiness had to be felt in spite of all the bad, depressing things in the world. It was a lifelike smile.

"I've made a choice," she told him. She closed her eyes, taking stock of her inner weariness before she said the only words that could lift it. "I guess you're what I've learned to believe in."

Pein realized that he'd thought about faith many times before Akatsuki; but those childish vows had died, as fleeting as time itself. He knew that this new faith was just as fragile, and would last no longer if he wasn't strong enough to last with it. He had to be prepared to keep this vow no matter the obstacles. It was the one true path to enlightenment.

"Konan, I'm honoured," he said quietly. The sentiment was so deep on both sides that it seemed to dig into the barriers between them, weakening some, destroying others.

Impulsive even in vulnerability, Konan reached out and took Pein's right hand in hers. For once, the warmth in his fingers was not from Zero.

"Did I miss much while I was gone?" she asked, honestly curious.

Pein thought back to the first official meeting of Akatsuki, to the power that had filled this clearing minutes before. He thought of being called "Leader-sama" and finding out what leadership really felt like. He looked down at their intertwined hands, focusing on the white strips of her skin between his. "Just a bit."

It was nothing that couldn't be made up for.

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A/N: I just realized that "Then he/she froze" must be one of most overused lines in fiction. But hey, it works.

I'm going to be so crushed if Kishimoto decides that Pein has to end up dying as some evil psycho. I mean, I suppose I would marginally rather have Pein die than Naruto. _Marginally. _ Someone should make a branch-off manga called _Pein. _ That would be sweeeeeet.

I think the battles should go like this: Sasuke vs. Madara (I know they're supposedly allies at the moment, but come on, Sasuke's got to draw the line somewhere before he sinks lower than _Orochimaru_ ), Sakura vs. Konan (like, _everybody _ wants to see this) and Naruto vs. Pein. One word: EPIC.

I like reviews even more than those cards that play music when you open them. Man, I can keep myself occupied for _hours _ with a store shelf full of those.


	23. Chapter 23: Supremacy

It's my pleasure to announce that today, August 26, 2008, is the one-year anniversary of _Pretense. _ That's right; it's been a full year since I started this thing, and we've still got a ways to go. 23 chapters in 12 months - not too bad, is it?

Anyway, it's been a pretty amazing year for me in writing, and here's to another one to come. :)

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Chapter 23 - Supremacy

"It shames me to admit this," Konan said, smiling slightly, "but I really can't wait to meet these guys."

No stretch of mind or word could give justification to describing Pein as fun, but sometimes, the act of being _with _ him was indeed enjoyable. In a semi-normal way, too; almost a way that ordinary teenagers hung out with their friends.

Konan had decided to give her fight for principles a rest; for now, she was able to bask in the simplicity of her single, wholehearted belief in Pein, and it was a pleasant break from the usual over-thinking that was expected from a ninja. She knew things would complicate soon - whether in a matter of seconds or a matter of weeks, she didn't know. The one constant in Pein was his unpredictability; for her, time was dictated by him. She thought it must be like that for most people around him (not that there were many, but apparently, that was changing).

She would always deny that he brought out weakness in her. He held power over her, yes; but he wielded it with something akin to gentleness. All the choices that she could see laid out before her when she was with Pein were mind-blowing. So she thought of it as a testament to her strength that she chose him over everything.

Pein would have considered himself lazy to have sat in this same clearing for days, if not for all the intense thinking he was doing. He shared the occasional thought with Konan, and found her conversation helpful. Her frankness was clarifying.

"You'll like Zetsu," he told her. After all, if he was anything to go by, she was passionate for what was _different. _ "Sasori is unique. Kakuzu is not likeable. But you will find them all interesting, I assure you."

"Oh, I know," she agreed readily. "They're hand-picked by you, after all, the almighty Leader-sama." He had given her an overview of the previous night's events, and she couldn't help but tease him a little. Not that you could call his new title a nickname.

He wasn't having that. "Call me Pein," he said. "Always." There might be a day when she would be his only lifeline, the only person capable of pulling him back from the rocky cliff of losing himself. He could depend on her for that. He always had.

Konan was surprised; it had been a reprimand, the way he'd said it. Well, if it meant a lot to him, she could handle it. The respect for him would always be there, no matter the name.

The sun was like a warm bath in this pre-afternoon haze, washing over her without searing. The tall, swishing grass with the thick woodland around it had seemed formidable and meaningful in the night, more so when shadowed with the first rays of dawn, but now it was friendlier. Before, with Pein, it had felt like such a private place - a place of darkness, breaking slowly out into personal light. Now, with him again, it was accessible to all comers, to all feelings, to all possibilities. It was the mystery of night and the magnificence of day, and the magic of both.

Almost of its own will, a patch of skin in the small of her back rose up into paper, a slender white sheet floating on the whims of the wind. She had selected it from an area she had judged would be unblemished, and it was; pure, unmarked, perfect. It was so much more sensitive than she was as a whole.

Pein reached out and grasped it carefully between thumb and forefinger as it hovered within arm's length. He brushed his finger down it, and Konan felt a shiver all over; the barest hint, spurring a memory of the euphoria she'd felt that night she'd finally mastered the paper jutsu. Then he blew gently onto it.

The tingle of something warmer and stronger than just air on her cheeks caused something unidentifiable to rise up unbidden; and then, Konan the kunoichi, self-appointed advocate for feminism and independence, was blushing.

Pein must have noticed, because his lips tilted upwards in a surprisingly unreserved smile. He brought the paper up to his mouth, holding it in front of his lips as his fingers deftly began to alter its shape. Konan watched, unspeakably connected to the movement of his hands.

When he was finished, a perfect white rose lay in the centre of his palm. He was amused by Konan's astonishment as she beheld it, her eyes questioning him. "I learned from you," he said, as if it were obvious. He held it out to her.

She couldn't take her eyes off the small craft, retrieving it from him as if it were made of glass, not paper. "You learn well," she breathed. Those hands that had often held a deadly weapon (hands that had often not _needed _ a weapon to be deadly), bloodstained hands, had created this tiny, delicate art. The world was an unfathomable thing.

Konan somehow knew that this rose was never going back into her skin; but scar tissue would form over the hole, and that didn't mean it couldn't stay _on _ her. She lifted it to her head and slipped it onto her hair, the paper crinkling crisply and her indigo strands rustling softly. Both sounds were audible to the two pairs of ears intently listening.

It was very symbolic; a part of her, shaped by him, returned to her but never the same. Pein took relentlessly, but what he gave was beautiful.

She watched him sideways as she lay sprawled idly on the grass, her head propped up on one elbow. He ran his thin fingers through his hair, its russet colour slightly darkened by its oiliness. Rogue shinobi like them rarely had the opportunity to stop and wash their hair; they had to do it on the run when they passed a body of water, or simply live with the dirt. Konan had never really been bothered by that. She wasn't vain, and she wasn't some hygiene freak either.

"Itachi sounds a bit uncertain about the Akatsuki," Konan noted after a time. "Because of his family, probably."

"Maybe," Pein said vaguely. To him, it had looked as if Itachi were purposely trying to detach himself from the Uchiha clan, making an effort not to think of himself as one of the family. Was it because he was leaving them? Or something worse? What was so much worse than leaving them?

"He's so young, and he hasn't been a rogue-nin for any amount of time yet," Konan said slowly. "It might help him if...he had someone...a partner, or something of that kind."

"I considered partnerships," Pein said, nodding. "You think they would be helpful, Konan?" It was strange, having this kind of business talk with Konan, but it worked. She had a good ear for his thoughts, and a good mind for ideas.

"Yes. Especially for certain members."

"Kakuzu," Pein determined. Wealth should be motivation enough for the greedy Waterfall-nin, but it would be wise to pair him with someone who could steer him towards the goal and not just towards the money.

Konan straightened. "Orochimaru," she said, scowling as the name crossed her lips. "That _snake. _ I don't trust him; put him with somebody you do. Remind me why you chose him?"

Pein was a bit bemused. He wasn't sure what Orochimaru could possibly have done to make such a horrendous impression on Konan; he was the first person he'd ever seen her act openly antagonistic towards. He hadn't been present at their first meeting, but obviously it hadn't gone very well. He knew Konan wouldn't do anything to the snake ninja while Pein forbid it, but he still figured he'd have to be wary of their disagreements; while he valued Konan's opinion, he only truly trusted his own.

"Orochimaru is useful, Konan. Akatsuki has its share of skill, intelligence and malice, but Orochimaru has pure venom. He has something to offer that no one else can; that's why I chose him."

Konan gave him a respectful but challenging look. "I know you always have your reasons, Pein. But so do I."

He returned the look, but as always, dropped his gaze before it could quell her defiance entirely. He liked that she was willing to stand up to him, that she had a backbone. Or maybe he just liked that she wasn't afraid of him. "Orochimaru is part of Akatsuki, Konan," he said mildly. "You'll have to learn to live with him."

He paused to let this sink in firmly, then continued in an almost conciliatory tone. "However, I think your suggestion of providing some members with a partner is an excellent one. Who would you recommend for Orochimaru?"

She sat up, not entirely appeased on the subject of 'the snake', but moving on as she realized he was actually consulting her on important matters of the organization. "Someone observant who can stand their ground without violence. Orochimaru should be watched and kept in line, but he wouldn't be intimidated by someone aggressive."

Pein considered. "Sasori." The Sand-nin was young, but his cunning was nearly equal to Orochimaru's, and unlike Orochimaru's, still had room for development and fine-tuning. The two had similar mannerisms, even similar desires. They were both alike and different enough for a selfish but more or less harmonious coexistence.

"And who for Itachi?" Konan inquired.

"If he decides to join," Pein rectified.

Konan looked at him thoughtfully, stroking the warm grass with one finger absently. "You seem to make more of an attempt to relate to Itachi than you do with most people," she noted. Pein didn't answer, and she didn't voice her opinion; that Pein and Itachi had a lot in common. Both very talented, very mature for their ages - you could say too much so. Both unendingly pursued by inner and outer conflicts they were unwilling to share with others. She was sure Pein was well aware of the parallels and what she would make of them.

"Kisame," she said suddenly. "Kisame and Itachi. They're already a bit familiar with each other. And Kisame is, well, loose, in almost every way; he won't care too much about Itachi's age, or what clan he comes from."

Pein could have sworn he heard her follow up with a mutter of, "Not like Orochimaru." The snake-nin did seem to have a fixation on the Uchiha prodigy (not Itachi himself, Pein suspected, but the abilities and attributes that came with him), and Pein couldn't afford to turn a blind eye to that, but he was reluctant to cause extra tension at Akatsuki's beginning by delving too deeply into personal matters.

Kisame was a good choice, it was true. He disregarded details like lineage, and would doubtless consider the Sharingan no more useful or potent than his own Samehada, and would therefore have no vested interest in it. Kisame was comfortable in any environment with any companions as long as he was promised a good fight. "That will be satisfactory," Pein approved.

For the first time, Konan felt truly and certifiably happy about staying with Pein. It felt right, talking about things like this and having her say accepted. Somehow, it seemed to her as if both of them were in their element here. She was closer to him this way, rather than trailing him trying to guess where his next footstep would be so that she could calculate how far behind him she'd be then.

"So that leaves us with Kakuzu and...Zetsu?" She was doubtful.

"They don't quite seem to fit," Pein agreed, amused. "No, I think it's best that we allow Zetsu to function on his own; Nature can be his partner, as I'm sure it has been all his life. Kakuzu, however, could use the occasional firm reminder. I'll look into it."

Konan nodded, straightening automatically. She became serious-faced as she grew serious-minded, thinking about the future, which seemed to have suddenly sprung upon her with the sudden, vicious power of a patient, stalking predator. It would have been overwhelming to her if she'd allowed it to be, but she regarded it as a nice change from dwelling on the past.

She was looking at Pein sideways out of the top corners of her eyes, and from this angle it seemed as if he were smiling. She hoped it wasn't just distortion.

As for himself, Pein was enjoying that interesting mentality in which he could appreciate the actual feeling of the cool, moist lips on his face, the snug fit of his eyeballs in their sockets, the soft brush of his hair on his scalp. It was a simple pleasure, so simple that people rarely discovered it.

Then a sound overrode everything. A faint, unobtrusive crunch, like... like a foot stepping on a twig.

Pein was on his feet and facing the opposite direction in a flash, taking in the implications in a moment. His senses were on constant alert. If he hadn't detected any kind of living signature much, much earlier, what did that mean?

"What?" Konan demanded, leaping up reflexively after Pein. But there was no need for an explanation from him.

Five metres away stood a man. He had a thick, spiked mane of jet-black hair, completely covering his right eye and nearly entirely obstructing the Leaf insignia on his forehead protector. He had an extremely handsome face, with impossibly smooth and unlined skin, a shapely nose and lips which were rather full for a man's. His left eye contained a perfect black pearl iris. He had no weapon in sight, but he did wear strange, bulky armour. It was reddish and rusty, a contrast to the rest of his immaculate appearance.

None of this threw Pein in the least, but something else did. It was how very _ordinary _ this man felt. He didn't look ordinary physically, but he lacked the extraordiness of a ninja, or indeed any living person; there was absolutely no power emanating from this man.

None at all. Nothing. Zero.

Pein was staring at him, mind racing frantically with questions and options. Possibility one: this man was not alive, as he had no life aura. Possibilities two, three and four: he had a type of Chakra that Pein could not sense, or it had been completely depleted, or he was hiding it with incredible skill. Pein had never encountered a Chakra that was beyond his senses, he was fairly sure that the man wouldn't be standing so steadily if he was completely depleted, and although he'd heard of jutsu that summoned dead bodies back to lifelikeness, he was certain he would have felt the Chakra of the jutsu's user. Then again, he had never met a Chakra shield this effective...

Konan, wary and confused but not so taxed with wonder, asked first, "Who are you?"

The man smiled at her. It was a genuine smile, but it diminished his handsomeness. He closed his visible left eye, then reopened it. Instantly on guard for an attack, Pein ordered harshly, "Don't look at him!" Konan immediately cast her gaze to the ground, while Pein met the eye squarely.

The man's eye was turning into...what was it turning into? For the eye was no longer there at all, nor were Pein's surroundings. He was falling away from all that, into a different plane entirely, a dark plane with white shadows. _No, _ he thought, _this is a genjutsu. I cannot let it trap me. _ He focused, summoning all the power held in his own eyes, and a deep red iris re-emerged from the smudged darkness that had begun to engulf him.

It was red, and inside the red was a bold, black three-point star with a hole in the centre. Its three points were connected by swirling arcs of black. The entire ensemble was spinning, inside Pein's head, not just his vision, and he was being pulled down and away once again...

He struggled. He had to hold on to that true image, to that eye and not what was trying to absorb him behind it. A focal point...a focal point...the red. Dark, deep, crimson. He held onto the colour, but the red wasn't enough. He had to fixate himself more strongly on it. Blood. Blood was red. Blood...

He could think of nothing but blood now, caught in the clutches of those twirling depths. But it was working - he was seeing the man's whole face once again, the trees behind it, returning to reality.

The man blinked, effectively releasing him. Pein blinked too, gathering his own thoughts again, and the red was gone. Thankfully.

"My, my," the man said, smile intact, "you _are _ talented."

Pein had never been caught in a genjutsu before. Never. His special eyes had always prevented it. But he had almost been ensnared by this one - would have been, if the man hadn't ended it. Not to mention that that red was familiar. Familiar, yet different from the one he remembered. "You're an Uchiha," Pein stated. It was the Sharingan - but not. That three-point star formation was not the normal Sharingan.

"Uchiha Madara, at your service." The greeting lost most (all) of its politeness when he didn't bow. "A flicker of recognition, perhaps. But no more than a flicker. Understandable; I'm sure many of those in positions of power through the ages, Uchiha included, have made a valiant effort to play down my part in history. A bit insulting, really, after all my achievements." He placed a subtle emphasis on the words 'power' and 'achievements', as if mocking the concepts they represented.

The best strategy, Pein decided, was to attempt an intensive Chakra probe. That genjutsu, some extremely lethal mutation of the Sharingan, had to mean that the man was a ninja. He would feel the probe, of that Pein was certain; but it couldn't be helped. "What do you want, Madara-san?"

"Oh, nothing much, Pein-_san_ ." Madara tossed his courtesy politely back into his face. "Just a pass to the goings-on of your intriguing brainchild _Akatsuki _ I've been watching you, and I must say that the development of your inspiration has been quite fascinating to see_._ "

Konan, who had raised her head by now, had been stunned into speechlessness. She had never heard anyone interact with Pein this way. And Pein was being _extra _ careful, so careful it was setting her nerves on edge. This casual remark, however, prompted her to open her mouth.

"Of course, I don't expect it to be free," Madara headed her off smoothly. "I would be most willing to negotiate and cooperate with you for mutual benefit."

"Explain, please," Konan said coldly, taking her lead from Pein, who was still concentrating on reaching Madara's expertly-masked Chakra.

"Certainly, Konan-san," he agreed, obviously taking pleasure in knowing things that they wished he didn't, such as their names. His mouth shaped the words with relish. His eye was black but bright, akin to the glint in a magpie's eye when it spotted a shiny object below. "Uchiha Itachi."

"Uchiha," Pein repeated, "Itachi?" His voice was so soft you could have missed it under the sound of the sky, but it was as layered as his bluish, blue and bluer eyes. Pein and Madara were breathing and speaking fire. Pein was handling it with care; Madara was playing with it. Between them, Konan could barely breathe, her throat burning with the heat of their conflict.

"You heard me correctly," Madara confirmed. His straight, relaxed posture hadn't shifted at all since they'd seen him; he was showing off a flawless picture of composure and casualness. _He doesn't fear me at all, _ Pein realized. _There's nothing about me, in his eyes, that can pose a threat to him. _ Pein was discovering a major weakness in himself; he was accustomed to facing those who were so much weaker than him they could hardly be counted opponents, and now that he was confronted with someone more powerful, he had little experience to draw on. Even the Akatsuki members, every one dangerous ninja, regarded him with wariness and respect. This Uchiha Madara was not wary of him, did not respect him. He knew exactly who Pein was, knew his capabilities, and it made no difference to him.

Pein gritted his teeth behind closed lips. If this confrontation came down to a fight, he couldn't win. He and Konan could not beat this man. He needed to concentrate harder, reach this man's Chakra, arm himself against this menace, or fall.

Madara was speaking again. "You must have noticed that Uchiha Itachi has a few matters on his mind. I'm sure he wouldn't object to a visit from the greatest Uchiha leader of all time. He could certainly use some advice from someone who is _familiar _ with his situation." Pein wondered if the dark inflection cast on all his words was intentional, or simply the natural tone of his silky voice. "And of course, if my advice should happen to lean in the direction of Akatsuki..."

He was recalling his history textbook from the ninja academy in Rain; there had been something about an Uchiha Madara there. _Madara... _ yes, the leader of the Uchiha clan who had fought the First Hokage of Konoha at the Valley of the End in one of the most epic battles ever. Although, now that it came to his attention, for a supposedly epic battle it was not very thoroughly covered by any lesson plan.

Konan had remembered too. "You aren't Uchiha Madara. He was killed by the First Hokage." Her jaw was set hard, masculine-like, and Pein realized that she actually held an advantage over him in this circumstance - being less prolific in her abilities, she was more used to being really challenged, and was less awed by the difference in skill between herself and Madara. She could treat him as simply another opponent.

"I was believed dead," Madara agreed pleasantly. He didn't seem disturbed by the mention of his own death; then again, if this was the real Madara, he had certainly had long enough to get over it. That battle had taken place many, many years ago; indeed, he _should _ have been dead, from old age if nothing else. But this Uchiha looked young and strong. "It was a useful thing, really."

He smiled at them, calm but animated. "Pein-san, Konan-san," he said, formally but not politely, "let me show you who I am."

He blinked, and this time Pein didn't even see the red before the world was gone.

* * *

_Pein looked down at himself. He was completely black, the lines in his skin and the folds of his robes blended into a smooth, solid blackness. He twisted his head around, and a spot of sharp white jumped out at him, a patch on his shoulder. He realized with a start that it was the old bloodstain on his cloak, obtained an eternity ago. _

_He looked the other way and saw that Konan was right beside him, although he could feel no life radiating from her. He could feel nothing anywhere, and he was standing on, or in, a red nothingness. Konan's eyes, outlined in white, met his. The rose he'd given her was like a dollop of whipped cream on her black hair. _

_He knew he was caught inside Madara's unusual Sharingan, and was surprised to feel the extent of his frustration. Apparently this genjutsu magnified emotions, perhaps to make the victim suffer more as they discovered they could do nothing about their torturously strong feelings. _

_More figures appeared in front of them on the red backdrop, all in black-and-white relief but vividly recognizable. Pein saw what must have been a very young Uchiha Madara, his mane of spiky hair sticking out behind his head, that look of smugness present in his eyes. He was quickly surrounded by a myriad of others, also obviously Uchiha, young and old. One of them stuck close to his side, resembling him; his brother. _

_There was no sound when the characters seemed to speak, but there were many sound effects. Pein was watching a brief overview of Madara's upbringing, hearing the clash of kunai as he fought and trained, the huff of his breaths when he faced a difficult enemy. Pein watched him grow stronger, bigger, more arrogant, more determined. He saw the enemies become more numerous, saw Madara struggle along with his family to fight constantly, his brother always at his side, their Sharingans flashing and swirling._

_Then he turned on a member of his clan, a boy his age, and Pein heard his panting as he drove the kunai into the chest, blood running over his hands, blood that was the same as that which ran in his own veins. Madara fell to his knees, and when he stood, his eyes, and his brother's, bore a different white formation in the centre of their Sharingan, that strange mutation of the bloodline that Pein had seen. _ Mangekyou Sharingan, _Madara's voice breathed into his skull. _

_Madara was older, harder, towering over the other Uchiha. His mouth moved as he yelled, though the battles raging around him were all that were audible to Pein. Another man came into the picture - just as tall, just as dangerous, but evidently on the opposite side of Madara. Pein recognized him as the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama. _ Future _First Hokage, in these memories._

_Suddenly all the others disappeared, leaving only Madara and his brother, taking centre stage in Madara's mind. Pein saw the brother bow his head with a smile, saw Madara reach out towards his face - then, for a moment they both vanished, and when they had reappeared, blood dripped from the empty eye sockets of Madara's brother, and Madara's eyes, marvellous, powerful, ensnaring, ran with white tears._

_Even Madara could not bear to relive the exact moment of atrocity and gain. _

_But something different was happening now. Madara, anger burning, was shaking hands with the First Hokage, his brother's wasted body in the corner. He wore a Konoha forehead protector. _

_Things moved fast from there, in flashes of furious images. Hashirama, dressed in his official Hokage robes, Madara fading in and fading out, blacker each time. The other Uchiha drawing away from him, until he stood alone, facing down the First Hokage. _

_Once again, the tumultuous noise of battle, and the rushing of a waterfall, filled Pein's ears as he witnessed the strength and wrath of Uchiha Madara, clan leader, versus Senju Hashirama, First Hokage. There was a deafening snarling, and suddenly a flash of orange whips and saliva-dotted teeth. Then, again, nothing but the red blanket that carpeted Madara's remembrances. _

The Kyuubi? _Pein wondered. Madara could control the Kyuubi... then, that later attack on Konoha had been...? _

* * *

There was no warning when Pein suddenly found himself back in the clearing, in the light and all the natural colours of day. None of them had moved at all, including himself, although Madara's smile was tight, his lips thinner.

"I hope you enjoyed story time," he said, self-satisfied, a mocking touch of acid permeating the silkiness of his tone.

Pein said nothing, digesting what he'd seen. He was actually reassured, now that he understood a bit more. Konan was profoundly disturbed, however - her breath came out in a mingling gasp of shock and huff of outrage. Her emotions were running high after that intracranial experience, and she could barely locate words. This was like nothing she had ever seen from anyone. Even Pein.

"It's..." she pulled herself together, forcing herself to be strong as she finished with, "...true." It had to be. She had never heard of the Sharingan's ability to do something like this, but she could no longer doubt this stranger. The reality of what he'd forced her to bear witness to was making her shake, sweat wetting her hair at the roots. "But it ends there. Where have you been since then?"

"Why, you said it yourself, Konan-san," Madara nodded to her. "Dead, of course." A sinister chuckle escaped him.

"Except for the occasions when you took the liberty of controlling the Kyuubi," Pein spoke up. Madara's darkly amused gaze swung towards him, apparently surprised but not fazed by his challenge. His eyes quickly widened in realization of Pein's cryptic accusation.

"Oh, I see, you think _I _ am responsible for the Konoha attack." He chuckled again. "I'm terribly sorry to disappoint, but I had no part in it. It was, as you say, a _natural disaster._ And it had _natural_ consequences for the Uchiha clan."

"What do you mean?" Konan asked slowly.

"I'm afraid it wouldn't be my place to answer that, my dear Konan-san," he replied easily - deviously. "As I was saying before, however, I would be happy to assist you in matters concerning Akatsuki, now that you believe my claim to fame."

"How do you propose to influence Uchiha Itachi in my favour?" Pein asked calmly. He had not abandoned his attempt to get past Madara's Chakra barriers, but he remained unsuccessful.

"_Really, _ Pein-san," Madara drawled, smirking. "You think that I couldn't influence Uchiha Itachi, a worthy descendant of mine, any way I should desire to? I know his struggles. I can give him the eyes that made me so powerful. After that, what is there that I _couldn't _ do with him?"

"You would convince him to join Akatsuki, then," Pein reiterated. Madara obviously liked to talk; that was a potential advantage for Pein. Make virtually unnecessary statements in the hope that Madara would let drop more information. He had already slipped several things which Pein had carefully filed away, probably on purpose, but that didn't mean they weren't helpful.

"That would be _my _ end of the deal, yes," Madara confirmed smugly.

Konan decided her distrust and dislike of this man were a million times stronger than those she felt for Orochimaru. "And our end?" she inquired frigidly.

"I'd like to join the _fun _ of Akatsuki as well." He smiled handsomely. "In a more prominent way than some members, of course."

_He'll try to usurp leadership, _ Pein thought. _He will take over, not quickly, but surely. He'll allow me to gather power, he'll add to it himself, and then he'll take it. All of it. _ It left a toxic taste on his tongue and a sick churning in his stomach, but he had no choice. "Very well," he agreed impassively. "It's a deal."

Madara's smile broadened into a smirk. He stepped forward, extending one arm. Konan tensed; Pein resisted the urge to.

Knowing what was expected, Pein also stepped ahead, reaching out to shake hands with the legendary Uchiha. He compared himself to the Madara he'd seen while in the Sharingan's clutches, smouldering with rebellion as he declared a peace treaty. He was doing a better job of hiding his displeasure than Madara had, but that was his one meagre source of consolation.

Madara shook hands very gently, not attempting to crush Pein's fingers. As they released hands, however, he very quickly stroked a thumb over Zero - the movement was so fast Pein would have missed it had he not been paying the most extreme of attentions to his opponent-now-supposed-ally, and had Zero not suddenly turned ice cold for a moment. The opposite of the usual burning-hot sensation, but even more unpleasant.

The freezing feeling travelled up his body, filling his lungs with ice that cracked into air, up into his eyes. Unable to bite back the power (and not particularly wishing to), Pein let them snap at Madara at full force.

The Uchiha's smile vanished and he jerked his neck violently, dispelling the momentary hold Pein had on him. He stared back at Pein, too taken aback to activate the Sharingan.

_You _ will _be wary of me. You _ will _respect me. _ Pein had not survived all these hard years for nothing. _Underestimate me at your own cost, Uchiha Madara. The Uchiha clan may be masters of fire, but if you continue to play with it, you will be burned. _

He could tell Madara understood, as the Uchiha smiled widely and briefly lowered his head, the first real acknowledgment he'd given Pein that even bordered on something like esteem. "I will keep my word, Pein-san," he promised. "Itachi will be under your authority very soon. And I will return to you as well, although perhaps not quite like _this."_

Suddenly he was behind both Pein and Konan, impossibly fast. "It's been a pleasure meeting you, Pein-san, Konan-san. Your attempts at unmasking my Chakra have been most entertaining, Pein-san. I will reward your efforts, although you'll have to wait until I have sufficiently distanced myself from you." He was gone before Pein could even discern the expression on his face, although he could imagine the superiority that would have been written over every suave feature.

"Sufficiently distanced himself from us?" Konan repeated. Pein made no response.

He tried, but he could still feel no aura from Madara. Konan's pulsed steadily beside him, but...

Without warning, he was hit by an enormous surge of Chakra, an onslaught of power to rival the Kyuubi's, and it was _right in his face. _ The strain was unimaginable - his blood coagulated in his veins and thrashed against his skin, his internal organs expanded into the bones encasing them, his brain threatened to combust inside his skull as his being struggled to make room for the invasion of a Chakra large enough to swallow Konoha whole. It was hot, blistering, rushing in steaming tidal waves that washed up into pools of poison.

Pein gave up all thought, fighting simply for breath and the ability to remain standing.

The Chakra vanished. Pein had dropped to one knee, overcompensating for the feeling of suffocation by sucking in huge breaths, sweat pouring down his face. He was dimly aware of Konan in something near the same condition, kneeling beside him and gasping.

_Simply unleashing his Chakra signature was enough to severely incapacitate me, _ Pein thought, relaxing for a moment to erase the shakiness in his legs before rising on both feet. _From so far away, as well. He has _ immense _Chakra reserves. _ He didn't doubt that Uchiha Madara was the most powerful ninja in the world right now, perhaps even the most powerful ever to have existed.

Recalling the torture, Pein sent out his thoughts to the person who was about to receive more trouble than any one ninja was trained to handle.

_All the best, Uchiha Itachi.

* * *

_

A/N: I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually find myself feeling sorry for Madara as I write this. I guess I believe he did love his brother and did it all for the sake of the clan, and if you think about it, neither of them got much of a reward for their dedication, did they? Seriously, the Uchiha should definitely have solved their _own _ problems, of which there were many, before attempting some stupid rebellion. Obviously Sasuke inherited the let's-go-after-power-while-our-own-world-crashes-down-around-us gene. I'm running short of sympathy for that boy.

So you guys got yourself a PeinKonan moment this chapter, as well as a new development. And I know I made Madara a total "clichéd bad guy" and probably a teensy bit too powerful, but hey, he's the next greatest supervillain.

Thanks for reading and celebrating this anniversary with me, and please don't forget to review!


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